


Wait

by cutloosemcgoose



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad Sex, F/M, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Mention of Kate Argent - Freeform, Mentions off offscreen violence, The Family Man AU, bottom!Derek, miscommunication during sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:21:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutloosemcgoose/pseuds/cutloosemcgoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sitting on his couch, staring at the wall, it feels like Derek is watching his whole, miserable, lonely life flash before his eyes. He’s twenty four and he’s alone. No family, no friends, no real pack. He’s six days away from spending one of the most family-oriented holidays of the year trying to avoid any human interaction. If anyone could see him right now, they would tell him he looks pathetic. If Laura could see him right now, she would probably beat the crap of him and then tell him he’s a loser.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/gifts), [stephie_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephie_lee/gifts).



> Seven months later, I declare victory over the [Family Man](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218967/?ref_=sr_1) AU (except with slight tweaks, as the original was too sad for me to handle).
> 
> Warnings for a mention of offscreen violence (against Erica); bad, unconsummated, miscommunicated sex (Derek & Stiles); and bottom!Derek. I have also been reliably informed that this may hit on people's embarrassment/awkward squick (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean; if not, it's your typical romcom miscommunications and awkwardness). If anyone would like more specific warnings, don't hesitate to ask; I'm cutloosemcgoose on tumblr and LJ.
> 
> Title is from the Beatles' [Wait](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5w5h2T87c).
> 
> A million heartfelt thanks to [Verity ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity)and[ Steph ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stephie_lee)for being amazing betas and cheerleaders, without whom this would never have been finished.
> 
> This what the [Stilinski-Hale](http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h207/Aisatsana449/3fa0dc5f-4910-422e-88fe-04d351e8c277_zps5ee12b30.jpg) house looks like in my mind.

The wendigo is—unexpected. Derek knows there’s something out in the woods, something with claws that has torn a few unlucky people apart, but the smart money is on an omega. An omega, he can deal with; so he tells Isaac not to bother coming down, that he can handle it himself. Isaac sounds more than happy with that plan; he’s probably hanging out with Scott in his dorm, in no hurry to come back to Beacon Hills to spend time with Derek.

The problem is that it’s not an omega, it’s a wendigo, and while Derek knows the mythology—thanks to Lydia and Stiles’ translation of the bestiary—it’s of absolutely no help while he’s fighting the damn thing. Claws don’t work, fangs don’t work, and while he’s making a break for the forest ranger’s office on the edge of the Preserve, the beast gets its own claws in Derek’ belly and rips.

The pain is excruciating—no matter how many times you’re practically eviscerated, you never get used to it—and it’s by sheer, dumb luck that Derek manages to break a window and haul himself into the office and away from the thing. It’s also testament to the fact that someone or something out there is, improbably, looking out for him, because there’s a blowtorch in the corner, and Derek has just enough time to grab it, turn, and light the fucking wendigo on fire before it goes in for the kill. It lets out some kind of unearthly scream and Derek must pass out for a second, because the next thing he knows, he’s slumped on the ground with a pile of still-steaming ashes in front of him.

It takes a few minutes to realize that he’s not healing. The wounds won’t close; they’re oozing, some kind of clear liquid that drips onto the floor when he tries to stand. It just fucking figures, Derek thinks, that wendigos have poisoned claws and no one will ever be able to update the bestiary because he bled out in front of a park ranger’s desk, all alone. He gives himself a migraine imagining how Stiles would flip out and shout at him if he knew. Grimacing, he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. Amazingly, it’s still in one piece. He forces himself to dial Deaton, already picturing the look on the other man’s face when he hears about this. Sometimes it seems like Deaton hasn’t stopped frowning at him since he came back to Beacon Hills.

“Derek? What is it?”

“I need a little help,” Derek grinds out. There’s silence; he can feel Deaton rolling his eyes from here. “I’m in the Preserve.”  
***  
The whole time that Deaton is patching him up—of course the vet has an antidote for wendigo venom—he’s silently judging Derek. There isn’t a single person in Beacon Hills who doesn’t judge him every time they meet; even the cashier at the supermarket gives him disapproving looks nowadays, when she sees how much less food he buys. It’s almost like Derek has a sixth sense for it, because he isn’t even looking at Deaton, choosing to stare at the floor, but he can still feel the pressure of a disgruntled stare on the side of his face. He could look up, glare at Deaton or ask what his problem is, but that would involve actually interacting with the man and he isn’t in the mood for that tonight. Not that he ever is, he’s just particularly disinclined to be lectured after almost being ripped apart. 

“Why were you out in the woods alone?” Deaton asks while he runs an amber-coated cotton swab across Derek’s stomach. It burns and Derek can’t keep an irritated growl out of his throat.

“I thought it was an omega.”

“And you didn’t think, with all the problems that we’ve faced here in town, that some back up would be helpful?”

“I don’t need a lecture,” Derek grumbles. “Are you finished yet?”

“A little gratitude might be in order.”

“Thanks,” Derek says, rising to his feet and grimacing at the pull of stitches across his abdomen. Deaton crosses his arms and Derek thinks about bolting before he gets the “concerned adult” speech, with bonus familial guilt, but it would be pretty undignified, considering Deaton did do him a favor. 

“What,” he sighs.

“What you currently have in place, Derek, does not qualify as a pack. With Peter gone, Isaac is your only beta. If you recall, I did warn you—”

“I remember,” Derek says and he does, the hot burn of shame at how Deaton had scolded him, in front of everyone, when the others had revealed their post high-school plans. With everyone except Isaac having moved away, Beacon Hills is weak, susceptible to attack. Derek’s noticed an uptick in activity, the last four months. He thought about adding it to the supernatural calendar Stiles had started, back in junior year, but didn’t bother. The last entry is from June, the last time Stiles had updated the online server. 

“Then you should know that you can’t continue on like this, Derek. If you’re not more careful, this reckless behavior will result in your death.”

“And?” Derek feels compelled to ask. “Maybe then Scott will get the chance to be the alpha you always wanted him to be.”

Fury crosses Deaton’s face like storm cloud. “My interest in Scott’s development as a werewolf does not mean I have some vested interest in your removal. If you’ve forgotten, I used to be an advisor to your family.”

“That doesn’t mean I need a lecture on how to lead.”

“Clearly you do,” Deaton snaps back. He takes a breath, trying to visibly calm himself. “I made your mother a promise—”

It’s the last thing Derek hears before he turns and leaves. He doesn’t give Deaton any warning, just walks out of the office with supernatural speed before Deaton can grab him or even say anything.

When he’s outside again, he remembers how to breath. It’s not the first time Deaton has brought up his former role with the Hale family and it probably won’t be the last, but it hurts every time. So does the mention of his mother. It’s—they’re gone. His family is gone, and Derek has known that since he was sixteen, he never forgets it, but it never stops feeling like a punch to the gut, every time he’s reminded, every time someone else brings them up. He could distract himself from the fact of it, sometimes, when the pack was still around and every day was a struggle, to keep the others safe, to referee their endless fights and arguments, but now that he’s alone, it creeps back into his head at the worst possible moments, grief stealing his breath away and stopping him in his tracks. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why he needs to keep moving forward, to stay alive.

He walks back to the loft quickly. It’s not like he has anything there waiting for him, besides a frozen dinner and some crappy reality TV, but he doesn’t want to be outside anymore. December in Beacon Hills isn’t like December in New York—there’s no snow and it’s not particularly cold—but the town still goes all out on Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. Most of the houses he passes have lights strung up in the windows or along the roofs, with a few fake reindeer scattered in front yards and wreaths hung on doors. One place even has a oversized pine outside, covered in lights and ornaments.

Derek hasn’t celebrated Christmas since he and Laura were in New York. They’d bought a mini-tree, more like a bush than anything else, and Laura had thrown tinsel over it. It wasn’t really a celebration, just a holdover, an old tradition from their childhood that they couldn’t shake. December 25th, Derek got up and went for a run in the park, and then he and Laura ate pancakes, spiked their morning coffee with brandy, and watched sports all day.

Even that Christmas will probably have this one beat by a mile; Derek doesn’t have any plans this year, besides a vague notion to hibernate all day to avoid the vaguely pitying looks of Beacon Hills’ entire adult population. Isaac may or may not stop by; Scott definitely won’t. Derek doesn’t even know where Erica and Boyd currently are, although he thinks it’s still the West Coast. Lydia might call, out of a deeply bred sense of politeness. Stiles won’t. 

Sitting on his couch, staring at the wall, it feels like Derek is watching his whole, miserable, lonely life flash before his eyes. He’s twenty four and he’s alone. No family, no friends, no real pack. He’s six days away from spending one of the most family-oriented holidays of the year trying to avoid any human interaction. If anyone could see him right now, they would tell him he looks pathetic. If Laura could see him right now, she would probably beat the crap of him and then tell him he’s a loser. 

He hates to admit it, even in his head, even to himself, but Deaton is right. Something has to change. That’s the last thing he thinks, before he finally falls asleep.  
***  
When Derek wakes up, it’s because he registers a heavy pressure, low on his abdomen. He feels groggy, thanks to the painkillers, and irritable. Waking up on because he needs to pee so bad that it hurts is just the shitty end to an all-around terrible week.

“Son of a bitch,” Derek says, without even opening his eyes.

There’s a gasp from Derek’s right and when his eyes fly open, there’s a little girl next to him, her face pressed up close to his. 

“Papa, you said a bad word!”

Derek tries to pull back, to leap off the bed and get far enough away from the child that he can figure out what the hell is going on, but he can’t, because the pressure on his stomach isn’t a full bladder, it’s a little boy, his whole body draped over Derek’s midsection and legs. Derek is struck speechless by the sight of a second kid and while they sit there, staring at each other, the little girl takes the lull in action as an excuse to start jumping up and down on the mattress.

“It’s Christmas!” she screeches, grabbing a pillow and shaking it in the air. “Daddy, wake up, it’s time for presents! Papa owes a quarter to the swear jar!”

Derek has only a second to feel bewildered—who are Daddy and Papa? Where did these kids come from? Why are they in his bedroom?—before he registers a low, familiar moan next to him. 

“Stiles? What the hell is going on?”

Tufts of wild, dark hair appear as Stiles sticks his head out from under the comforter, giving Derek the evil eye. “That’s two quarters, buddy, take it easy.”

Deek is shocked. Stiles looks—older; yes, it’s been four months, but he shouldn’t have wrinkles around his eyes, tiny creases by his mouth. There’s a day’s worth of stubble, just starting to show on his cheeks and his hair is longer, almost curling at the ends. It looks like it’s been years since Derek saw him, but that’s impossible.

Derek continues staring, even as Stiles leans up and—kisses him. It’s brief, two seconds of lips pressed to his own before Stiles pulls away and Derek can’t remember the last time he felt so confused, out of place, hopelessly adrift in a situation. He’s been frozen in shock on the bed for only a minute, but it feels like it’s been days.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” Stiles is saying to the little girl, scooping her into a hug and peppering her face with kisses while she squeals. “Did you drag your poor brother out of bed at 5AM just to open presents?”

“Yes,” she says, shameless. “Can Papa make pancakes now?”

Stiles turns to him expectantly, depositing the little girl on Derek’s lap and pulling the baby in for a round of hugs and kisses. “Merry Christmas, Benji. Well, Derek, can you make pancakes now?”

Derek flees.

There’s no other word in the dictionary for it. He shifts the girl—his daughter, his mind unhelpfully supplies—onto the bed and then makes an about-face and heads right out of the room. The house is small enough that he finds the front door before Stiles can say anything other than, “hey, Derek, where are you—” and then he’s through it and running.

Magic, his brain suggests while he runs down unfamiliar country roads. He has no idea where he is. It has to be some kind of—spell, enchantment, a witch’s curse. Just because he can’t remember running into magic users recently doesn’t mean anything. Someone has drugged him. This is a psychotic episode, a delusional break—

“Unless it’s real,” Derek says out loud, slowing to a jog as he starts to recognize his surroundings. Maybe it’s amnesia. Maybe—and he swallows hard around the thought—maybe he and Stiles are together and they somehow have two kids. And maybe there was a supernatural fight or maybe Derek just fell off a ladder while putting up Christmas decorations and hit his head and he’s somehow forgotten about it all. 

There’s a “For Sale—Sold!” sign in front of the vet clinic. Derek stops cold. If Deaton is gone from Beacon Hills—his only thought had been, I was there last. He had been sure that Deaton would know, that he could explain what the hell was going on.

Derek is running his hands through his hair in frustration and wishing he’d thought about putting on shoes—while also questioning why on earth he’s wearing pajama pants with Christmas trees on them—when he hears the familiar roar of the Camaro’s engine. He doesn’t even spare a second to be pissed at whoever’s driving his car, he’s that happy to see something he knows in the midst of all this madness.

When the driver’s side window rolls down, Erica’s on the other side of it. Her hair is short, curling in layers around her face.

“Derek? What the hell are you doing out here?” She takes a second to size him up. “Without shoes?”

Derek is not even bothering to freak out that the beta who twice abandoned him is now driving his dead sister’s car. If he thinks too hard about anything that’s happened since he woke up, he’s afraid his head is going to explode. “Where’s Deaton? I need to talk to him.”

Erica gapes at him. “Deaton and Morrell left town six months ago, Derek. Don’t you remember?”

Shit his luck.

“Did you seriously forget that, then run here—shoeless—on Christmas morning? Hey, are you still drunk from last night?” Her eyes narrow before she breaks into an open-mouthed laugh. “Are those Christmas trees? God, Stiles has you whipped.”

Derek really wants to take off in the opposite direction on principle, as Erica continues laughing. But he’s cold and whatever the hell is happening, he’s not going to solve it by wandering around in the woods like an idiot.

“Can you give me a ride?” 

Erica smiles, and it’s genuine this time, not mocking. “I was just waiting for the word, fearless leader. Hop in.”

Derek tries to keep quiet as Erica drives, not wanting to give anything away, but he can’t help sneaking looks at her in the driver’s seat. She looks—happy, whole, self-possessed, the opposite of a scared girl with tears in her eyes and scars on her arms, telling Derek again that she has to leave.

The third time he does it, Erica slams on the breaks. Derek’s reflexes are too good for him to be thrown forward, but it’s a close call.

“What the hell! Are you crazy, you can’t just stop in the middle of the road like that—” 

“It’s Christmas Day,” Erica says dismissively. “No one’s driving around Beacon Hills, it’s fine. What’s not fine, though, is the way you keep staring at me like you’re seeing a ghost. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Derek says, wincing at how defensive it sounds. Erica raises an eyebrow. “You just look—different,” he improvises.

“Bullshit,” she says. “I look the same way I did last night, which is the same way I’ve looked for, I don’t know, the last two years. Try again.”

“I can’t explain it,” Derek says, trying for the vague approach. “Just, don’t worry about it, okay? It’s nothing.”

Erica stares at him a moment longer, considering, before she guns the engine. “Don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.”

They drive on in silence until Erica breaks it. “Hey, don’t you guys have that Christmas pancake thing to do?” When Derek just stares at her blankly, her jaw drops. “Oh, shit. Stiles is going to kill you.”  
***  
When Derek gets back to the house, Stiles runs up to meet him. Erica peels out of the driveway without a word at the sight. For a minute, Derek had been sure that when he got back, things would be—normal again, but that’s not the case. Stiles is still ten years too old, rubbing his hands over his arms in the brisk morning as he sizes Derek up. He’s wearing one of Derek’s old shirts and a pair of ratty sweatpants.

“What was it? Werewolves or something else? Did you take care of it, or do I need to round up the usual suspects?” he asks. Stiles is trying to joke, but Derek can tell how upset he is, how he’s just barely holding back panic. It’s weird; Derek would have thought that time and distance would start to make Stiles unfamiliar to him, that four months would be enough to dull his awareness of Stiles, all his tics and tells, but it’s the opposite. He can still read Stiles’ face so clearly, even though it’s not—his face. Even though it’s not real, Derek reminds himself.

“No,” Derek says shortly. He can see Stiles’ fear start to shift, his expression sharpening. 

“No? Then what was it?”

Derek just shrugs. “I had something to do.” He doesn’t know how much this Stiles might or might not know about what’s happening; he hadn’t seemed surprised by the kids, but he could be faking it, dealing with the same thing Derek is going through and trying to hide it until he knows more.

Derek is busy trying to parse out the situation: does Stiles know, or doesn’t he, and how can Derek figure it out, what’s the best way to approach the situation, when he looks up to find Stiles staring at him, anger etched in the lines of his face. 

“Something to do? That’s your excuse for running out on our kids—on us—on Christmas Day? What happened to pancakes? Lorelei almost had a panic attack when she’d realized you’d really left. What the hell were you thinking? Did you want to scar them for life, or was that just a side effect of your asshattery?”

Stiles doesn’t know what’s going on, then. It had been a faint hope, but it’s still a blow to realize that he’s in this alone. Derek doesn’t understand half of what Stiles is saying to him, so he does what he always does when he’s attacked—he goes on the offense. 

“Listen to me,” he snaps, cutting Stiles off mid-word. “I don’t care about your Christmas traditions or your stupid pancakes. This is not my house, those are not my kids, and I don’t know what the hell is going on, so you better stow your crap and help me figure it out.”

Stiles is silent for a minute. Derek thinks that he’s gotten through to him, that Stiles is going to say, “okay, let’s call the Scooby Gang and solve this one,” and then Stiles points to the front door. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get. Out. I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died, but I’m not letting you ruin our kids’ Christmas. Get out of my house before I throw you out.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Derek scoffs. The next thing he knows, he’s actually being lifted in the air and thrown out the door, onto his ass, by Stiles, who is apparently both more physically defined and in possession of some serious magic skills. Even as Derek bounds to his feet and tries to force the front door back open, he’s thrown back by what feels like an invisible force field. Mountain ash.  
***  
He goes to Scott’s.

It’s not hard to track someone, especially a werewolf that he knows as well as Scott. They’re still not pack, still not close, but after what feels like a lifetime of weathering supernatural disasters together, Derek knows Scott’s scent well enough to find him easily.

It doesn’t hurt that Scott lives four blocks from Stiles. Or from—both of them, Derek forces himself to think. Since apparently the place on Pine is their house.

Scott answers the door. “Hey, man. Merry Christmas.”

Derek is saved from having to say anything (like, seen anything suspicious around town lately? Mages, spellcasters, demons? Oh, and by the way, where the hell is Deaton?) when Scott barrels on.

“Stiles already called us. You can stay here tonight, but you have to know I’m not picking sides here.”

“Sides?”

“Yeah, my best friend or my alpha? Not happening. Especially not on Christmas Day.” Scott reaches up and claps Derek on the shoulder. “That was a really dick move, you know. I hope you’re planning something good to make up for it.”

Derek follows Scott into the house, which is nicer than he’d expected. He wonders what career he conjured up for Scott in this fantasy.

Allison is in the living room, which is another surprise. In reality, they’re still broken up; Scott is going to Riverside and Allison moved up to Portland to go to Reed. After being on-and-off again throughout high school, despite Scott’s constant proclamations that he and Allison are soul mates, Derek would have guessed that going to college in separate states was the end. He wonders what it says about him that his brain apparently does think they belong together.

Allison smiles at him, looking a lot friendlier than the last time Derek had seen her. “Merry Christmas, Derek. Scott, can you go get us some drinks?”

As soon as Scott has left the room, Allison turns to Derek. “I’m not going to do anything as cliche as threaten your life—especially since Lydia can and will do it better—but I am going to tell you to get your head out of your ass and fix this.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Stiles so upset,” Allison says, seriously. “And the kids were in hysterics. I don’t know if this is some werewolf mid-life crisis or just you being a moron—”

“Hey,” Derek protests.

“—But the next time you make my goddaughter cry, I’m going to hurt you. Badly.” She smiles and it reminds Derek of her father.

“Do we need to talk about it?” Scott asks, when he comes back inside with three mugs of hot cider balanced precariously in his hands. He sits next to Allison and the look they share isn’t one Derek has ever seen.

“No,” Derek says, looking down at his cup. “It’s—I just did something dumb, that’s all.”

“Hey,” Allison says, reaching out and putting her hand over Derek’s. “You know that if you ever need help, we’re here. That’s what pack is for, right? You don’t have to do it alone anymore.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, swallowing hard. “Thanks.”

Scott brings him a pair of pajamas that fits perfectly. Derek wonders how many times he’s slept over here, and if Stiles kicked him out every time or if he just left on his own.  
***  
He goes back the next morning, waving off an offer of breakfast with Scott and Allison. Stiles answers the door with a disgruntled expression and his arms crossed, hair sticking up on one side and pillow creases on his cheek. Even rumpled like this, he looks about five seconds away from kicking Derek’s ass across the front lawn.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says.

There’s silence.

“If that’s seriously all you have to say, I’m going to make you sorry you ever came home,” Stiles warns. His voice is hoarse. 

“I’m...really sorry,” Derek bites out, aware that he doesn’t sound even remotely regretful.

Stiles stares at him for a second before uncrossing his arms and taking a step back. “Come inside, I can’t yell at you on the porch without all the neighbors coming out for a show.”

Derek momentarily considers just running away and living in the woods until he can either find Deaton or figure out what’s going on by himself, but Stiles looks over his shoulder and says, “kitchen. Now,” and Derek follows him inside.

The house is really nice. It doesn’t look anything like his old house did; it’s a small craftsman style with what looks like an entire toy store spread out across the first floor. Stiles steps on a loose Lego just before they enter the kitchen and just says, “jesus, fuck,” before moving on, like this happens every day, like this is their life.

As soon as Derek is past the threshold, Stiles leans against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms. “Want to try that half-assed apology again?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Derek offers, feeling defensive under the weight of Stiles’ gaze. He hadn’t figured out what to say this morning, thinking he could make it up on the fly. It isn’t going well. “I don’t know what happened yesterday, I just—” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what happened.”

Stiles stares at him, unblinking. Derek breaks first, looking down on the floor. He doesn’t understand it, but he actually feels ashamed, in the face of Stiles’ clear disappointment. 

He hears Stiles sigh and when he looks up again, Stiles has turned around, is bracing himself against the kitchen sink with his shoulders hunched and angry.

“If this is—some kind of mid-life crisis—”

“Why does everyone keep saying that, I’m not that old,” Derek protests.

He can practically sense the smirk. “Keep telling yourself that.” Stiles turns back around, then, and the smile is gone. “I can’t pretend to understand what would make you—freak out like that, on Christmas Day and run out on your family, but if you swear that you weren’t—attacked, or poisoned or something and that it’ll never happen again, then I’ll—” Here, he falters and looks oddly young for a moment. “Well, I won’t forgive you. Not right away. You’re definitely sleeping on the couch for the next week. But I’ll accept that this was a one-time breakdown and not, you know, punish you for the rest of our married lives.”

Derek feels his pulse rise at that. Of course, he’d assumed—they had two kids and lived together—but he doesn’t have a ring on his finger. Stiles does—a plain, gold band on his left hand that looks like it belongs there. Derek has a sudden sense memory of the Sheriff, cuffing Derek before putting him in the back of a squad car, a similar ring on his hand. He touches his finger without meaning to, wondering where his ring is, why he doesn’t wear it—it figures that even in his own fake world, he’s a shitty husband and father.

Stiles notices the gesture, of course, because he’s too perceptive by half. “It’s in your bedside drawer, if—if you still want it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you tell me,” Stiles snaps. “Jesus Christ, Derek, you run out the front door like a bat out of hell on Christmas morning, I have to spend the whole day thinking you’re dead or maimed or just never coming back, and then on top of it all, I have to lie to our kids about why their dad is missing on the most important day of the year. You did a real number on them, let me tell you. If this is some passive-aggressive bullshit way of saying you want a divorce—”

“I didn’t say that,” Derek says quickly. Even if Stiles doesn’t know what’s going on, Derek still needs a place to stay while he figures this out. And even though he could just drive to a hotel room or squat somewhere, it’s going to be twice as hard to get to the bottom of this if the whole pack is out looking for him. It’s easier to just play along until he can get back to—reality, the real world, whatever the hell it is.

“You have to talk to me, Derek,” Stiles says, and he’s not begging, but it’s close. “I can’t help you—we can’t figure this out—if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I. Don’t. Know,” Derek grinds out. “Don’t you think that if I had any idea, I’d be asking you?”

Stiles has the nerve to look upset, like he’s not just a figment of Derek’s imagination or a by-product of some kind of brain trauma. Derek refuses to feel bad for putting that expression on Stiles’ face. He does. 

Stiles would know how to get back, he realizes abruptly. If Stiles—this Stiles—weren’t convinced that this is all real, if he had understood what Derek meant about it all being fake, he would already have fifteen different theories about what’s going on and how to fix it. If Derek had been smarter about this, played along from the beginning, he could be picking Stiles’ brain right now for solutions.

“Fix your face before it gets stuck like that,” Stiles advises and Derek realizes he’s started scowling. Stiles looks tired, unhappy, and he’s staring at Derek like he’s a stranger. They are strangers, where Derek is from, so it doesn’t bother him, but he can tell that Stiles is upset.

“Sorry,” he says again. Stiles doesn’t look impressed. 

“I have to go get ready for work. Isaac is coming over to stay with the kids.”

“And I’m—” Derek starts, hoping that Stiles will finish the sentence so he can figure out what the hell he does for a living.

“No offense, but until I’m sure you’re not actually having a psychotic break, you’re not staying here alone with the kids.” Stiles looks pained. “Seriously, I hate having to do this, but if you’re a danger to yourself or them, someone has to be around to stop you, so. Isaac’s on duty today.”

“You got me a baby-sitter?” Derek asks, incredulously. “And Isaac?”

Stiles shrugs. “All he has to do is get you inside the panic room, which even I can do when you’re knocked out. Personally, I’m banking on the kids whipping you into shape, he’s our secondary.”

Derek feels mildly offended that even Stiles thinks the betas outmatch him, but if Isaac is watching the kids, he might be able to get some research done, make a few phone calls. “Fine by me.”

Stiles squints at him. “Don’t make me regret this before I even leave the house, okay? Try to act a little remorseful. For my sake.” He doesn’t wait for a response before leaving the room.

Derek wanders around for a little while, looking at the house. His first impression was right, it is nice. It’s also easily defensible and he recognizes some of the rudimentary safety measures that someone has installed. He assumes there’s also some kind of magical protection involved, because the wall sparks when he lays a hand on it. He has to grudgingly admit that it’s a much better place than the loft.

Past the kitchen there’s a dining room, den, and bathroom. The den looks like, once upon a time, it had been someone’s idea of a man cave: lots of wood paneling, leather furniture, and a massive flat screen, with three game systems clustered around it. It also looks like it was attacked by a horde of angry children a few years back, children who made it their personal mission to destroy the place. There are drawings and scribbles, some of which appear to be permanent marker, all over one wall, a gigantic tear in the loveseat and, again, enough toys covering the floor that he can’t even see the carpet. Of course Stiles would be the type to buy out an entire store to keep his kids happy.  
***  
Stiles is carrying the baby—their baby, Derek’s mind corrects—when he comes back downstairs and the little girl—their daughter, his brain insists—is walking next to them. She stops short at the sight of Derek and squints at him in an unbelievably familiar way.

“Papa?”

“Hi,” Derek says, feeling more awkward than he ever has before, even his first high school dance where he stood against the gym wall praying the floor would open him up and swallow him whole so that people would stop looking at him. 

“Derek, you have something to say to the kids?” Stiles prompts. Derek wants to point out that only one of those kids looks capable of understanding what he’s saying, but Stiles is glaring at him.

Derek wipes his palms on his jeans. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

The squinting continues. “Daddy said you were sick, are you better now? Why didn’t you let Daddy drive you to the doctor’s office? Did you throw up a lot?”

“Um,” Derek says intelligently, not even knowing where to start.

Stiles sighs loudly, theatrically. “What did we say about against Papa too many questions when he doesn’t feel well, Lore?”

“Not to do it,” the girl replies, rolling her eyes. She looks exactly like Stiles when she does it. If Derek thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this could still be—some kind of prank, a joke, how could he and Stiles have kids?—the eye rolling crushes that idea flat. That’s Stiles’ daughter, alright. 

The baby continues gnawing on one of Stiles’ fingers, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Lucky bastard. 

The doorbell rings and Stiles starts moving towards the front door, but the little girl moves towards Derek instead. She stops in front of his feet and looks up at him expectantly. Stiles has already disappeared through the dining room, clearly trusting that, at the moment, Derek won’t murder his child.

“Yes?” he asks her.

She frowns. “We didn’t get Christmas kisses and hugs yesterday because you were sick. I want them now.”

“From me?”

“Yes.” She crosses her arms over her chest, clearly a trick she picked up from Stiles. “Now.”

Derek thinks about just bolting into the kitchen, but he also thinks about making her cry and how many different ways Stiles knows to kill a man. He bends down and lifts her up, carefully. It’s been years since he held a kid, carried anyone who wasn’t bleeding or wounded. He tries to remember how to do it. 

Lorelei—that’s what Stiles had called her yesterday—settles on his hip easily, like she’s used to it. She winds her arms around his neck and puts her head on his shoulder, exhaling loudly while she squeezes him. “I missed you, Papa,” she says. Derek doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say.

After a minute she lifts up her head and stares at him. “Now, kisses,” she demands. Pushiness, definitely a Stilinski trait. He wonders if the kids got anything from him. His mind probably knew better than to saddle them with any parts of himself. 

He leans forward hesitantly, pecks her on the cheek. He feels—weird, kissing someone like this. Lorelei scrunches up her nose. “Whiskers, yuck.” She pats his cheek with one hand. “You should shave, Daddy doesn’t like it when you kiss him with whiskers. Now, down.”

He lowers her to the floor, almost mechanically, and lets her grab his hand to guide him into the kitchen. When he walks in, Isaac is holding the baby, looking serious as he listens to something Stiles is saying. They both turn to face Derek.

“Hi, uncle Isaac,” Lorelei says, letting go of Derek to throw her arms around Isaac’s legs. “Papa was sick yesterday, but now he’s better.”

“So I heard,” Isaac replies, giving Derek a speculative look. “Are you? Better, I mean.”

“I’m fine,” Dereks says. Stiles snorts and everything in the kitchen becomes a thousand times more awkward. “It was—nothing.”

Isaac nods easily. “Okay. Who’s ready to go play?” he asks and Lorelei shrieks, “me, me!” like everyone in the house isn’t standing within ten feet of her. He and Isaac both wince; Stiles and the baby seem strangely unaffected.

“Well, that’s my cue.” Stiles leans over to press a kiss to the baby’s forehead, then crouches down to hug Lorelei. “Be a good girl today, okay?”

“Okay, _Dad_ ,” she says, sounding for all the world like a bored teenager. Isaac laughs at the matching disgruntled expressions on their faces. 

Stiles steps towards Derek and he braces for death threats, maybe an explanation of how exactly Stiles will inflict bodily harm if he hurts the kids in any way, but all Stiles does is lean over and press a quick kiss to Derek’s cheek. “Be good,” he says quietly, and Derek is aware that everyone in the kitchen is watching him and, also, that his ears are now bright red.

“Okay,” he says, and watches Stiles walk out.  
  
Isaac seems to take Derek’s disappearance as nothing more than an aberration, something he trusts won’t be repeated again. After checking with Derek for a second time—“you really are alright?”—he drops the subject and turns all of his attention to the kids. Derek spends about two minutes eyeing the laptop on the dining room table, haphazardly shoved under a pile of bills and papers, before Isaac cocks an eyebrow and says, “aren’t you going to join us?” Then, he spends the rest of the morning helping Lorelei and Isaac construct a pillow fort and do battle with a couple of balloon animal swords.  
***  
Their anniversary is on a Tuesday. Derek doesn’t know that, because he hadn’t bothered taking more than a cursory look at all the paperwork, the marriage licenses and birth certificates in the study. It’s just a Tuesday like any other. Stiles rolls out of bed when the alarm goes off, tripping over a Tonka truck and landing face first on the floor. 

“Son of a—”

Derek sticks his head out from underneath the blankets, just far enough to make sure Stiles isn’t bleeding copiously or dying. “Are you okay?”

Stiles just sort of rolls around on the ground, clutching his nose. “Where did that toy even come from? He had a stuffed animal in here last night.”

Derek shrugs from inside his cocoon, not that Stiles can see him. Stiles pinches him on the leg in retaliation when he goes inside the bathroom. “Thanks for rescuing me, asshole,” he says. Derek tries to kick him but misses.

Derek snoozes as Stiles showers. If the kids aren’t already screaming bloody murder, they’re probably still asleep; he’s been trying to tire them out every night to avoid the energy surge of their first day. He thinks it’s working. 

Stiles comes back a few minutes later, with Benji in his arms and Lorelei tagging along, one hand fisted in Stiles’ bathrobe. “Up,” he commands, and Derek sits against the headboard, still half asleep, so that Stiles can deposit the baby in his arms as Lorelei starfishes out all over the bed and tries to cling to Stiles when he walks away.

“Daddy, come back,” she whines, waving one arm in his direction.

“Sorry, starshine, I have to get ready for work. Hold onto Papa, he looks lonely.”

Lorelei turns, flopping over Derek’s legs so that he can’t move. “Thanks,” he mutters, leaning his head back. Benjamin looks like he’s already fast asleep. He’s the most easy-going baby Derek has ever encountered; nothing seems to phase him or stress him out, he hardly ever cries, and he’s prone to sitting quietly and just looking at people—especially Derek—while his sister runs around the house, doing cartwheels, screaming, and just generally being a nuisance. Derek thanks god that at least one of the kids is quiet, because if he had to deal with Stiles and two mini-hims, he’d probably go insane.

Stiles comes back, kisses both of the kids and Derek before heading out. He’s wearing his deputy’s uniform today and it’s just a little too tight in all the right places. Derek idly thinks that there’s probably a special place in hell for people who think about jumping someone’s bones when their kids are right there. 

“I’ll see you tonight?” Stiles asks.

“You always do,” Derek says. Derek stays home with the kids all day; he has a carpentry business that he runs out of their garage. It seems pretty small, not too many clients, although he gets the sense that he’s slowed things down on purpose since Benjamin was born. The billing receipts from two years ago were much higher, although they’re nothing compared to six years ago; before Lorelei was born, he guesses. There’s a playpen in one corner of the garage, which has been blocked off completely from where Derek works. There are even more toys in there, which is starting to make Derek wonder if they completely bought out the entire stock of toys in Beacon Hills. Still, he can’t help but be pleased when he sees Lorelei playing with a plastic, mini tool set so that she can be “just like Papa.”

Lydia shows up at four thirty. At the sight of Derek, shirtless and sweating, while Lorelei is sacked out on the floor and Benji is slamming a waffle block against the ground, she lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“I assume this means that their bags aren’t packed?” she asks. Off Derek’s blank look, she tsks and leaves him without another word. Derek goes back to work, but fifteen minutes later, Lydia is back. She crouches by Lorelei and pats her on the shoulder. “Wake up, sweetheart. Time for a sleepover with aunt Lydia.”

Apparently, Lydia is either magical or has terrified his children thoroughly, because Lorelei gets up without a word of complaint, which Derek has never been able to achieve, while Lydia picks up Ben. “Give your father a kiss,” she instructs Lore, holding Ben up for the same. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”  
***  
“Come on, aren’t you ready yet?” Stiles asks impatiently from the bottom of the stairs. Derek purposely starts getting dressed even more slowly, just to fuck with him. Here, he can do that— mess with Stiles, go out of his way to make him crazy without being worried that Stiles will defect to the Alphas or abandon the supernatural life all together. 

Derek doesn’t understand what’s going on at first. 

Across from him, Stiles is practically vibrating with excitement. Derek can’t figure out what could be so thrilling about cut-rate sushi, but he doesn’t get the chance to ask.

“Okay, who should go first? You should go first,” Stiles says, almost knocking over his water glass as he gestures towards Derek.

“What,” Derek says. He doesn’t think he’s felt so confused since he woke up on Christmas morning in a bed full of people.

“You’re right, I should go first,” Stiles says, even though Derek’s question hadn’t really been a suggestion. Stiles reaches underneath the table and Derek has a moment of heart-stopping panic, where he’s afraid Stiles is going to pull out his dick or maybe a machine gun—maybe this has been one long, extended dream that’s about to become a nightmare—but instead, Stiles places a neatly-wrapped box, complete with perfectly tied bow, on top of the table. 

“Open it!” Stiles urges, when Derek just sits and stares at the box for a long minute. The present, his mind corrects. It’s a present. And it’s not his birthday, or Christmas. It’s an anniversary present.

Derek undoes the the bow carefully, mechanically, hands moving on their own because he’s in shock. He’s concentrating on slitting the paper with one fingernail and peeling back the edges because he can’t think about anything else. 

The gift turns out to be a fancy, deluxe woodworkers kit. Derek runs his hand over each piece, fingertips brushing the chisels. It’s beautiful.

When Derek looks up, Stiles is beaming at him so hard it looks painful. “I noticed you eyeing one a few months ago in Sears. It’s not—it’s not the best one they had, but I went back and asked one of the guys and he said it was a solid set. And none of the tools can horribly mangle your hands or maim the kids or anything, which, major criteria.

“So,” Stiles says, after a long pause, where Derek can’t stop staring down at the set. “What do you think? Is it—not that every present has to be about your work, or something, but I know you’ve missed making stuff, I thought it might help.”

Derek looks up. “I love it,” he says weakly, and Stiles grins and claps his hands.

“Yes! Score one for me on good anniversary presents. What a relief, I was afraid it would be like the toaster year again. Okay, your turn.” 

Derek feels so—so—he’s ready to turn around and run out the door of the restaurant, fake a heart attack, anything to get away from how time seems like it’s slowing down as the smile slides off Stiles’ face, inch by inch, while Derek sits there like a fucking moron, speechless.

After what feels like an hour, but is probably no more than a minute, Stiles just looks at him, very steadily, and says, “you forgot, didn’t you.”

Derek doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just looks back at Stiles, at the way he very carefully draws his shoulders up, squares them, and takes a deep breath before raising a hand to signal the waiter. “Can we get the check, please?” he asks, and to someone who doesn’t know Stiles, he would seem fine, perfectly in control, but Derek has known him long enough to see the tick in his jaw, the way one hand, which until a minute ago was on the table reaching towards his, relaxed, is now clenched into a fist. 

The whole ride home is silent. Every time Derek thinks about saying something, about opening his mouth to apologize, to try to give an explanation, no matter how half-assed, something stops him. Maybe it’s how steady Stiles’ hands are on the wheel, or the way he hasn’t turned towards the passenger side even once since they got it. He’s afraid to say something, Derek realizes. It’s like a blow to the chest. He’s always considered himself brave, fearless; he doesn’t have many good qualities, but throwing himself into any problem instead of shying away, that he’s always been able to do. Not this time.

Stiles pulls into the driveway and Derek thinks, this is it, say something, but Stiles jumps out as soon as the car is in park and Derek gets tangled in his seat belt, trying to follow. By the time he makes it inside, cursing, Stiles has disappeared.  
***  
Stiles is sitting at the kitchen table when Derek slowly makes his way back downstairs. He’s loosened the tie, undone the top button of his dress shirt. It’s the nicest thing he’s worn since Derek woke up here; that should have been the first clue.

“Hey,” Derek says quietly. He doesn’t know what to say, but he can’t leave things like this, the memory of Stiles’ face at dinner, the pinched expression on it when he realized that Derek wasn’t joking.

Stiles raises his glass of whiskey in a mock salute. “Happy anniversary, honey.” He sounds—bitter, the way he had right before he left for New York. He hasn’t sounded like that once, here, not even that first day when Derek had known he wanted to take a swing. 

Derek swallows hard. “I’m sorry.”

Stiles slams his glass down on the table so hard that liquid sloshes over the rim and onto the table. “There’s a certain point, Derek, where apologizing becomes meaningless and you’re so far over that line right now,” he says. He’s over-enunciating in a way that means he’s already well on his way to being drunk. 

“I know,” is the only thing Derek can offer. He’s never been good at apologizing, at meaning it.

Stiles smiles. “Well, as long as you know how fucked up this is, that’s fine, huh? That’s all it’s going to take?”

“No,” Derek says. “I don’t expect you to—forgive me, or forget about this. It is fucked up. I fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says slowly, all the fight seeming to drain out of him. “I don’t know what to do here, Derek. It’s not even—it’s an anniversary, right, it’s just a stupid way for the industry to make money off saps. But this isn’t the first—problem. You left on Christmas, you said we weren’t your family, even the kids have noticed. Lorelei asked me if the pod people had taken her real dad away.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Derek says, feeling stung. He thought he’d been doing well with the kids, as well as anyone could with their two imaginary offspring.

“I couldn’t even answer her. You’re not—the same person I married anymore.” Stiles looks up from his drink. Derek doesn’t know how to describe the look on his face, the utter dejection. “Maybe we should think about—about a trial separation.”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s good for the kids to be around us like this,” Stiles says miserably. “Half the time I want to punch you and the rest of the time, I wish you weren’t here. That’s not—I don’t want them to grow up thinking that’s normal.”

“Are you—are you seriously going to throw away—”

“Ten years,” Stiles snaps, when Derek hesitates. “That’s exactly what I mean, who the fuck forgets how long they’ve been together?”

“You’re going to throw away ten years,” Derek continues, barreling on over Stiles, “just because we had—a few rough months?”

“Sometimes I look at you and I feel like I’m seeing a stranger,” Stiles says. “How is that supposed to make me feel? Every day I leave for work and I think, “what if he snaps, what if he does something to the kids,” how am I—supposed to live with that?”

“I would never,” Derek says. “Stiles, I swear. I love them, I wouldn’t—”

Stiles is staring at him, a cop’s stare now. He reminds Derek of the Sheriff, looking at him across a table and asking if he knew who killed Laura.

“Okay,” Stiles says quietly. “I believe you. About that. But I still don’t—” He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to believe anyone, when they told me this was a bad idea,” He says, low. “We were doing so well, you know? And it’s not like I did it to—prove something, to anyone, because I didn’t, but part of me still thought, “this’ll show them.” Everyone who said that we wouldn’t last, that we were a bad couple. Even with the kids—” He swallows hard. “Even my dad told me to wait, said, “what’s the rush?” and like an idiot, I said, I said, “no, it’s fine. We’re going to stay together forever.”” He laughs, miserably. “What a moron I was. They were all right.”

“They weren’t,” Derek says desperately. “I’ll do better, I promise. I know, I know I’ve been—different since Christmas, but—”

Stiles is looking down again, at the glass in his hand. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore tonight. I’m going to bed.” He stands, moves to leave the kitchen, but Derek grabs his arm before he can go too far.

“Just—don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “Please. I’m going to make this up to you, just—give me a chance.”

Stiles looks down at the hand on his arm and Derek remembers being thrown out the front door. Stiles is taller now, filled out, all broad shoulders and hands. If you took away the magic and the wolf, he might win in a fight.

Stiles doesn’t shrug him off, doesn’t brush past Derek and leave him standing alone in a dark kitchen. He licks his lips once, very deliberately, looking at Derek as he does. Derek’s pulse kicks into overdrive and he can feel his ears start to turn red. He’s thought about it, of course he has; they share a bed, wake up more mornings than not tangled together. Sometimes Derek will be hard, or Stiles, or both of them, and there’s some friction, hips rolling as they move together for a minute before the alarm goes off or there’s a crash from the kids’ room. Every time, Derek feels guilty afterwards, disgusted with himself for taking advantage of a Stiles who thinks he’s someone else, someone he knows and loves. There’s never time for anything else, between work and the kids and the house, weekly pack meetings, the PTA. Derek was never this exhausted when there was a kanima on the loose, when the alpha pack was tearing shit up in town. At least in those days he’d had time to jerk off once in awhile, hurried and unsatisfactory as he thought about—as he’d tried not to think about anyone, about Stiles, big brown eyes and soft lips, the way his hands were always moving, touching his body, his face. Very pointedly not touching Derek, those last few months in Beacon Hills. 

These days when Derek’s head hits the pillow, he’s out like a light. Stiles hasn’t said anything, hasn’t made a move towards him—he works long shifts at the station, spends hours playing with Derek and the kids when he gets home, has been very distinctly hands-off while Derek has been here.

He thinks about what Stiles had said—about feeling like there’s a stranger in the house—and wonders if that’s why he’s never—tried anything. If he’s really afraid of Derek, if he thinks something is wrong. He must not be too worried, if he hasn’t thrown Derek out yet—there’s no way Stiles would leave anyone he thought was a threat near the kids.

Derek is still thinking about it when Stiles leans in and kisses him. It’s not like any of their other kisses, which are mostly pecks, short things while one or the other is coming or going. This is hard, urgent; Stiles presses his whole body against Derek, reaches up with his hands to yank Derek closer. Stiles is—a great kisser, Derek has to admit, as his hands settle on Stiles’ waist. He wonders if Stiles learned from him, if there were others, before or maybe in between, people in New York or Beacon Hills who got to lay hands on Stiles, feel him shake apart in their arms. Stiles bites down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood, drags him back to the present where Stiles is grabbing his thighs to help lift him onto the kitchen counter.

Stiles gets them both out, struggling with his own fly even as he keeps kissing Derek, his throat, his face, biting down on his collarbone as he jerks them both off. Derek runs his hands over Stiles’ body under his shirt, his shoulders, around his ribs. He grabs Stiles by the hips and pulls him closer, needing to feel Stiles, the way the muscles in his arm tense and release with each pull. Stiles is panting in the silence of the kitchen, harsh breaths that gust against Derek. He won’t look up.

“Stiles,” Derek says, breathless, and Stiles stiffens.

“Don’t talk,” he says, forehead against Derek’s, looking down at his hand wrapped around them both. “Just—be quiet, let me.”

“Stiles,” he exhales. “Look at me.”

Stiles looks up at him. He’s angry, flush high in his cheeks and mouth open. “You’re such an asshole,” he says, punctuating the word with a sharp twist of his wrist. Derek moans, can’t help himself. “Yeah, you like that?” he asks, the angry tone lessened with just how hard he’s panting. “Jesus, you—”

“Yeah,” Derek says, mindlessly. “I know. I am. Just—”

“Ah,” Stiles gasps, when Derek’s hand joins his. His other arm is wrapped around Stiles’ shoulders, using him to stop from sliding off the counter. Stiles is strong enough to bear his weight, keeps one arm around Derek’s waist while the other works between them. Now that he’s got Stiles’ attention, he can’t stop staring: at Stiles’ face, his lips, red, and the scratch of stubble burn around them, at the way Stiles’ pupils are blown wide while he stares back, looking at Derek like he’s a mystery, a puzzle to be solved. 

Derek leans forward to kiss Stiles when he feels how close he is to coming. Stiles turns his head at the last second and Derek catches just one corner of his mouth.

It feels like all the heat in his veins turns to ice. “Don’t,” Stiles mutters, half-heartedly continuing to jerk them off even as Derek starts pulling away. He’s in a bad position, half supported by Stiles’ body and in danger of falling to the ground, but he doesn’t care, pushing at Stiles’ shoulders until he gives up, lets them slip from one slick hand and step back.

He should look completely ridiculous, dick hanging out and shirt rucked up to his armpits while he stares at Derek. He doesn’t. Stiles just looks sad and Derek can feel his heart sinking to the ground at that. 

“Shit,” Stiles says after a second. It sounds too loud in the silence. Derek watches him zip himself back up and leave the kitchen without another word.  
***  
Derek sleeps on the couch. When he gets up the next morning and goes into the kitchen, Stiles is already sitting there, hands clenched tight around a coffee mug. His eyes are red-rimmed and he looks like shit. There’s some kind of noise-canceling spellwork around their bedroom; Derek can hear when the kids make noise, but they can’t hear him unless he speaks with intent from behind the door. Stiles probably did it to keep from mentally scarring Lorelei and Benji for life, but all it means now is that Derek couldn’t hear if Stiles was crying last night or planning inventive ways to kill him and dispose of the body. 

Stiles flinches a little when Derek comes closer. It hurts like hell; Stiles had hated him, before he left Beacon Hills, but he hadn’t been scared of Derek in years, all throat-ripping threats aside. To see it now, on the face of someone who, a few weeks earlier, had woken up and looked at Derek like he hung the stars—

“I’ll go,” he blurts out. It’s not what he meant to say—at all—but he can’t help himself. “We can tell the kids—anything, the truth, that I had to go see about a thing, whatever you want.”

Stiles looks down at his coffee. “Running away isn’t going to fix this.”

“Well, you made it clear last night what you think about—this,” Derek says, waving a hand to encompass the kitchen, the house, and their life in general. “So right now, all I care about is making things easier for Lore and Ben.”

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says. “About last night, I didn’t—”

“What are you sorry for?” Derek asks, genuinely surprised. “I’m the one who—:

“Who pushed their husband away when he went for a kiss? What are you, a hooker? Jesus.” Stiles scrubs a hand across his face, up into his hair. It looks like a bird’s nest and all Derek wants to do is run his fingers through it. Jesus, is right.

“Last night was me fucking up,” Stiles says. “I never should have—I never want to treat you like that. Doesn’t matter what we’re going through, that’s not—” he swallows hard. “That’s not the kind of husband I want to be. So I’m sorry.”

Derek thinks about saying, “there’s a point where apologizing is useless, Stiles,” just to be an asshole, but he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, what happens here. It’s not real. It’s a psychotic episode, or a coma, or some freaky supernatural shit, but it’s not reality and his actions don’t have consequences, so he can be heartless, or mean, or violent, and it doesn’t change anything.

He doesn’t want to be any of those things, though. He hates this look on Stiles’ face, doesn’t want to be the one responsible for putting it there. Derek doesn’t believe in second chances, in a god who lets you atone for what you’ve done, that he would deserve another shot, even if it were possible. But still. The opportunity to fix something—this one thing—even if it’s only in a dream world, even if all it does is comfort a Stiles who’s one part imagination, two parts wishful thinking—it means something to him. 

The last time he saw Stiles, it was a week before freshman orientation, when Stiles stopped by the loft to say goodbye. Stiles saw the rest of the pack before he left, Derek knew, so that last meeting was just for them. Stiles said a bunch of stupid, flippant stuff, never meeting Derek’s eyes, looking anywhere but him. After two years of being allies, pack, almost friends, it was too much to bear. Derek had been brusque, wished Stiles luck in New York, and sent him packing.

They haven’t spoken since.

“I accept your apology,” he says, and Stiles’ head snaps up. “And I’m sorry, too. I know what you said yesterday—”

“Forget that—”

“No,” Derek insists. “I know—look, I know you. You were a detective when you were sixteen, and you were twice as good as anyone out there. I get that this must look—terrible to you. But you have to—please, just trust me on this one. I’m not going to hurt the kids and I’m not going anywhere. I’m here, I’m in this with you.”

“I trust you,” Stiles says softly. “I trust you with everything, you have to know that after all this time.”

Derek sits down next to Stiles, reaches out and grabs his hand. “Okay,” he says. “Then just—stick with me, all right? We can—we can do counseling if you want, therapy, whatever helps.”

Stiles looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “You want to go to therapy? You actually want to talk to a stranger about your problems?”

“Absolutely not,” Derek says, and Stiles barks out a laugh. “But I will, if that’s what it takes to fix this.”

Stiles leans forward and kisses him. It’s not a peck, but it’s not the angry meeting of last night, either. It’s somewhere in between, Stiles’ mouth tasting like coffee and mint, just a hint of the whiskey underneath when his lips part to let Derek in. He ends up cradling the back of Derek’s head with one wide palm while they make out at the kitchen table like a couple of teenagers.

“Okay,” Stiles says, when they finally pull apart to breath. “You convinced me.”  
***  
Derek pawns the kids off on Scott and Allison for the night. He’s too scared to ask Lydia and he’s too worried to leave them with Erica and Boyd. There are photos of Lorelei and Erica with matching red streaks in their hair, taken on Erica’s last birthday. Derek has a small heart attack at the sight of his daughter, grinning toothily at the camera with a mini leather jacket that matches his.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Scott says as he reaches out to grab Lorelei from Derek’s arms. “But why are we babysitting and not Lydia?”

“Because I’m the Alpha,” Derek says with a completely straight face. Scott rolls his eyes while Derek bites back a laugh; Stiles must be rubbing off on him. “And because you two need the practice,” he adds.

Allison’s head snaps up from where she’s making funny faces at Benji. “What?” they both cry, with matching expressions of bewilderment. Derek smirks as he closes the door in their faces. He’s definitely been spending too much time with Stiles.

Derek meets Stiles at the front door at five. “Hey, Derek,” Stiles says, looking confused. “Why are you...just hanging outside our house, alone?”

“Because we have plans,” Derek says. “Come on, let’s go. Scott and Allison have the kids,” he throws over his shoulder, as he walks to the car. Stiles is staring at him, bewildered. “We’re going to be late.”

“Where are we going?” Stiles asks, jogging to keep up with him. “I’m still in my uniform.”

“Your clothes are in the car, get in the backseat.”

“What are you, my chauffeur? Okay, alright, I’m going,” Stiles says, shaking his head as Derek rolls his eyes. “You’re being very mysterious tonight, husband.”

“Yeah, well,” Derek says. “Don’t you need mystery to keep the romance alive?”

He only catches a glimpse of Stiles’ smile from the corner of his eye, quickly spreading over his face, but it’s enough.

It cost Derek an arm and a leg for reservations at Del Posto, but it’s worth it when he sees Stiles’ expression at the sight of the restaurant. “Derek,” he hisses as they walk towards the entrance. “What are you doing, we can’t just walk into a place like this—”

“Hi,” Derek says, smiling at the hostess, who looks like she’s about to faint. “Two, under Stilinski?”

“Right this way,” she breathes, grabbing two menus and leading them towards what is, unquestionably, the nicest table in the restaurant. It’s up against the window, with a view of the water in the distance. Candles are already lit and there’s a bottle of red wine waiting for them.

Stiles’ mouth is hanging open in a way that should be really unattractive, but really isn’t; Derek is surprised to find that the slack-jawed look on Stiles’ face makes Derek want to kiss him, not roll his eyes. It’s a big change, from where’d they been before. 

“Happy anniversary,” Derek says softly, as he pulls the chair out for Stiles and nudges him gently to sit down. “I know I’m a week late, but—”

“Did you—” Stiles swallows. “Did you seriously empty out our savings account to try—to make it up to me?”

“No,” Derek says easily. “Turns out I have a stash at home called, ‘asshole tax,’ and it’s pretty big. I must have known I would do something like this, sooner or later.”

“Hey,” Stiles objects. “You’re not—this is—” He takes a deep breath and reaches across the table to grab Derek’s hand. “Thanks. You didn’t have to go all this trouble.”

Wait until you see what I have at home, Derek is tempted to say, but he reins it in. He doesn’t want to ruin the surprise.

“You’re welcome,” he says instead. 

By the end of dinner, Derek is exhausted. The last time he tried so hard to—woo someone, to impress them, he was sixteen years old and thought Kate Argent was god’s gift to mankind. He’s had flings over the years, a few short-term relationships while he was in New York, but nothing like this. He wants so badly for Stiles to enjoy this, to have a good time, to remember why he fell in love with Derek in the first place. Well. Why he fell in love with a Derek Hale in the first place. He’s spent the last week trying to brainstorm ideas, find ways to make it up to Stiles—even after they talked, things have been awkward at home, just this side of too polite and strained. The kids picked up on it: Benjamin’s been moody lately, prone to crying for no reason that Derek can discern, and the day after the anniversary from hell, Lorelei came home from Lydia’s, took one look at Stiles’ face, and stepped on Derek’s foot with all the force she could muster. It caught the edge of his pinky toe and made him grimace.

“Lorelei!” Stiles snapped. “What was that for?”

Lorelei pouted, looking distressingly cute. “Because he made you cry, Daddy.”

Derek had looked at Stiles in shock—he knew the kids were werewolves, hadn’t been able to figure out if they’d inherited Stiles’ gifts, too. Stiles just sighed and crouched down to face Lorelei.

“Yeah, he did, but that’s something grown-ups do sometimes, sweetheart. Papa hurt my feelings, but he apologized and things are better now. You don’t have to be mad at him on my behalf.”

Lorelei had said, “okay,” but she’d spent the week punishing Derek in inventive ways, “spilling” her milk all over the table, riling Benji up until he squalled, and informing everyone who came over that her papa was a mean man who made people cry. The mail woman looked about three seconds away from calling child protective services on Derek; he’d had to hastily explain that he and his husband had had a fight, that was all, and then he’d had to try not to blush when she smirked at him knowingly. By Friday, Derek would have gladly welcomed a supernatural attack from literally anything if it meant escaping for a few hours. Maybe days.

Stiles smiles at him. It feels like cheating. It’s like someone else built this great foundation and Derek gets to just swoop in and reap all the benefits, gets Stiles’ smile over spaghetti bolognese and his fingers, wrapped around the stem of a wine glass. Derek knows it’s stupid to feel jealous of himself—it’s not like he’s stealing Stiles from someone else, just—alternate version Derek Hale, a guy who doesn’t stutter over “I love you,” who was brave enough to go after what he wanted instead of letting it slip out of his fingers. He knows, he does, but he can’t help but feel guilty and terrible, wonders if the Derek that Stiles fell in love with is stuck in his world, alone, without a pack, not even understanding how he could have lost his whole family in the blink of an eye.

He knows and he doesn’t care. Refuses to, actually. He may have switched universes or something, but Derek Hale is a grade-A asshole no matter where he is, so he pushes forward, over his unease, his discomfort, and goes right on, living someone else’s happy life instead of trying to find a way back. If that makes him as bad a person as everyone’s always accused him of being, so be it. 

“After you,” Derek says, when they get home. Stiles gives him a bemused look, but starts forward. 

“I hope there isn’t some supernatural bad guy waiting inside the house, because you’re going to lose all the points you just earned,” he tells Derek, who follows him up the path, wanting to see Stiles’ reaction when he opens the door. 

“What—” Stiles begins, voice stuttering to a halt when he gets a good look. The front hallway is lined with rose petals, illuminated by the candles strategically placed through the house. Isaac had lit them just fifteen minutes ago, when Derek texted him from the restaurant. 

The rose petals are all Derek; he’d bought six thousand, which was definitely overkill, but they’d come as a unit and no matter how much he wanted to impress Stiles, he wasn’t going to buy a dozen bouquets and rip the petals out by hand. 

Stiles turns around and tries to say something, but his mouth just struggles to form words for a few seconds before Derek takes pity and moves in for a kiss. He backs Stiles up against the front door, reaches out and cradles Stiles’ face in his hands as he dips down to brush their lips together. Stiles surges up against him, threads his fingers through Derek’s hair and yanks him closer.

They kiss for long, breathless minutes, Derek’s hands slipping under Stiles’ fancy shirt to tweak at his nipples, draw a long groan out of him. “Jesus christ, your hands,” Stiles says, somehow managing to combine affection with irritation while he thrusts up against Derek. “More, come on, I need more.”

Derek laughs at how pushy Stiles is—not like he expected anything different—and obliges, drops his hands down to cup Stiles’ ass and squeeze, pulling them closer together. Stiles takes the opportunity to roll his hips up and now Derek is the one groaning, forcing his eyes closed because the sight of Stiles, flushed and rumpled and aroused under Derek’s hands is too much, he’s already too close to coming.

Stiles takes advantage of his distraction, reaching down to cup Derek through his dress pants, rub the heel of his hand hard over Derek’s dick. 

“How about you get out of these pants,” Stiles whispers, exhaling hot against Derek’s ear.

“How about you fuck me,” Derek suggests, and Stiles actually keens at that, eyes rolling back in his head.

“Oh my god, you can’t just—say things like that, not when I’m already so—”

“Me too,” Derek admits, biting down gently on Stiles’ earlobe, “So take off your clothes, I want you inside of me.”

Stiles bites down on his lip, probably to try to control himself, but all it does is rev Derek up more. He’s practically humping Stiles’ thigh now, trying to get some friction going. He’s hard, already leaking into his boxers and he’s seriously going to embarrass himself if Stiles doesn’t start moving right now. 

“Okay, okay,” Stiles says, shoving Derek back far enough to start attacking his clothes. “Should we go upstairs or re-christen the front hall, it’s been a few years.”

“Right here,” Derek says. “First. The second time, maybe we’ll go to the bedroom.”

“Oh, you think there’s going to be a second time?” Stiles asks, speculative look in his eyes. 

“I want you at least three times,” Derek informs him, and Stiles laughs, although it cuts off once Derek finally struggles out of his boxers to stand naked in front of Stiles. “Come on.”

Stiles drops his pants, yanks his boxers down just far enough to free his dick, and then grabs Derek and pushes him against the wall. Thank god for his late high school growth spurt; being the same height means that Derek just has to bend his knees a little for Stiles to be in the perfect position.

“Shit,” Stiles says. “Wait, we—need lube,” he forces out, even as his hips keep stuttering forward against Derek’s, the feel of skin on skin making them both curse. 

“Right here,” Derek says, holding up the bottle he’d just barely had the presence of mind to pull out of his pocket.

“Were you carrying that around all night?” Stiles demands, looking somewhere between impressed and pissed off.

“Yup,” Derek says. “I thought about seducing you in the bathroom, but I knew we wouldn’t have enough time for everything.”

“You’re a menace,” Stiles says, even as he’s slicking up his fingers. Derek has to take a deep breath, force his body to relax when Stiles presses inside of him.

“Derek, look at me,” Stiles says, and Derek forces his eyes open. Stiles looks uncertain. “If you don’t want to—”

“No,” Derek says, grabbing Stiles’ wrist to keep him in place. “I mean, yes. I want you to, I just—it’s been a while.”

Stiles doesn’t answer, just leans forward and starts to kiss Derek again. They stand there, make out for long minutes, Stiles’ mouth moving against his easily. He’s so relaxed that when Stiles presses forward, hesitant, Derek doesn’t even break the kiss, just rolls his hips up and then down again, onto Stiles’ fingers.

If Derek let him, he thinks Stiles would be happy to keep fingering him open all night, to rut against Derek’s thigh until he comes, but Derek started this night with a plan, and he’s seeing it through. “Come on,” he says, breaking away from Stiles’ lips just far enough to murmur, “I want you to fuck me. I’m ready.”

Stiles pulls back far enough to look at Derek, steady, all the urgency of earlier bled out of him. His eyes are shining a little in the candlelight. 

“No,” he says and grabs Derek’s hand. “Come on, we’re going upstairs—”

“Stiles—”

“It has been too long since we did this and I don’t want our anniversary sex to happen in the hallway, okay. I am going to take you upstairs and make love to you, on our bed, and it’s going to be amazing.”

Derek wavers for just a second—he’d had a vision of up-against-the-wall, body-slamming sex that was very detailed, but Stiles make a persuasive argument—before Stiles moves in, so close that Derek goes cross-eyed trying to look at him, and whispers, “I want to spend the whole night showing you just how—crazy you make me,” and that’s all she wrote.

Later on, Derek will probably feel a little embarrassed at how shameless he was, how he only spent two minutes on his back with Stiles’ teasing smile over him, moving out of sight as he kissed his way down Derek’s body, to lave his hipbones with his tongue and bite down gently on the insides of his thighs, before Derek couldn’t take it anymore and he had to flip Stiles—laughing now—onto his back, to climb into his lap and straddle his legs and sink down onto Stiles’ dick. He’ll probably feel a little sheepish at how he rode Stiles so hard that Stiles had to grab his hips and hold on to keep them together, how he just had to lean down, after a few minutes, and kiss Stiles, who was panting, his pupils wide and his whole body that beautiful red that Derek remembered well from senior year, Stiles flushing with arousal every ten minutes, how it made Derek want to sink to his knees, see if that blush went everywhere. It did. It does. 

But in the moment, he doesn’t feel any of that. What he does feel is—more complicated. Mostly it’s happy, he reflects afterwards, lying under the crook of Stiles’ arm, nose pressed against Stiles’ chest. “You’re such a puppy,” Stiles had laughed, when Derek had curled up there afterwards, sticky and a little sore and still breathing hard. But his eyes had crinkled as he said it, and he’d pressed a kiss to Derek’s temple, easy and affectionate.

He still feels guilt, nagging at him and ruining the afterglow, so he forces it away. Deaton and Morrell are gone. He’s been doing his own research, but it’s going nowhere fast, and it’s been two months. This might be a long-term thing. Derek might be here forever. And if that’s the case, why shouldn’t he—make the most of it. Stiles needs a husband, the kids a father. Derek never thought that he could be either of those things, or that he could be them and not fuck it up horribly, but. Maybe he can. He can act, lie, fake it, he’s always been good at that, and he thinks that he might be able to do that here. For as long as he is here. It’s not a hardship, to kiss Stiles and hold him, to read the kids bedtime stories and give them baths. Derek Hale, the husband and father that might have been, in another lifetime. And if he gets something from it, too, gets the pleasure of being able to hold Stiles’ hand and wake up next to him in the morning, the joy on Lorelei’s face when he picks her up from daycare and the way Benji will sit for hours and stare at Derek like he’s the most interesting person in the world, well, that’s a fair trade. 

He resolutely doesn’t think about what his Stiles, the real Stiles, would have to say about sticking his head in the sand like this.  
***  
Derek finds the videos after he puts the kids down to nap, despite Lorelei’s extremely vocal protests.

“I’m not tired!” she screams directly into his face, while he carries her away from her toys and into the kids’ room. Derek reminds himself that he’s faced down hunters, alphas, and a kanima. One five year-old will not cow him.

“PAPA,” she shrieks into one ear. Derek thinks about dropping her—she’s a werewolf, it won’t kill her, but Stiles is pretty attached and she would definitely rat Derek out.

“When you act like this, you’re just proving my point for me,” he tells her, reasonably. It’s what his mother used to tell him whenever he threw tantrums. Not that he did that weekly from ages four to seven or anything. 

Lorelei growls at him, low, and Derek can’t help but laugh. He hugs her tight, even though she squirms in protest. “Come on, I’ll read you a story,” he tells her which, he learned from Stiles, are the magic words to calm Lorelei down. If he thought they owned a lot of toys, they’re nothing compared to the books in the house.

There are tons of home videos—Stiles must have wanted to document every second of their lives together. They start in college—mostly during summer vacations and breaks, pack barbecues and parties. Even beginning with the first one, Derek can’t figure out what happened, how they got together. The summer after freshman year, everyone is at a pool party at Lydia’s. Scott is filming and he zooms in on Stiles, sitting on Derek’s lap in a lounge chair. They’re talking intently, before Derek cracks a smile and kisses Stiles. 

“Ew,” Scott says, his voice amplified by how close he is to the camera. “Stop sucking face, that’s gross, man.”

Stiles flips Scott off without breaking the kiss, which Derek can’t help but feel smug about. 

Scott puts the camera down on a table after a few minutes to cannonball into the pool, splashing Lydia, who’s trying to tan in the chair next to Derek and Stiles. It starts a chain reaction, with Erica knocking Isaac into the water and lifting Stiles bodily off of Derek to dump him into the pool. Derek gets up to make sure he’s fine—shooting Erica a dirty look on the way—but Stiles tricks him, leans up for a kiss and then pulls Derek into the pool while everyone laughs. Erica’s only bested when she gives up, lets Boyd pull her into a kiss before they jump in together. Lydia and Danny continue to sit poolside, sipping top-shelf martinis and watching the proceedings with a judgmental eye.

All the videos are similar—a Christmas party in Scott and Allison’s tiny apartment, with Stiles and Derek kissing underneath the mistletoe; a series of graduation tapes, apparently all filmed by Derek, showing one pack member after the other walking across the stage to thunderous applause; a Thanksgiving where the turkey burnt to a crisp and Melissa McCall and Sheriff had to show up with an emergency back-up meal. 

Derek cries when he watches “Lorelei’s First Day at Home and then “Benjamin—Day One.” He and Stiles look so openly terrified at the sight of a baby that he’s not sure who thought giving them a child was a good idea. It’s clear that neither one of them knows what they’re doing—Derek, his voice cracking, actually says, “but what if I drop her?” before Stiles shoves Lorelei into Derek’s arms so that he can start heating up formula. The Sheriff is a frequent guest, seemingly at ease with the baby in a way that takes Stiles and Derek months to achieve. 

There’s one late night video that Derek filmed, of Stiles sitting in a rocking chair, holding Lorelei in his arms and humming to her, off-key. He looks up when Derek enters the nursery. Stiles looks like shit—his eyes are red with dark circles underneath and his hair, longer than Derek has ever seen it, is sticking up in ten different directions. 

“Hey,” he whispers to the camera, voice hoarse. “I think she finally fell asleep.”

Derek aches, suddenly and viscerally, for his family. He wonders what Laura would have thought of her namesake, if he would have clashed with his parents over how to raise his kids, what the Hales would have made of Stiles. He wishes they were still here, to experience all of this with him.

There’s no wedding video. There’s one of Scott and Allison’s—a huge, extravagant event where Chris Argent cries, unabashedly, and Melissa McCall dances a salsa that gets a standing ovation. Erica and Boyd got married in the backyard of Erica’s home, with Derek himself officiating the ceremony—Isaac is the best man and breaks down during his toast. Lydia catches the bouquet and Stiles the garter, leading to the most awkward and hilarious five minutes of Derek’s life. Stiles is bright red and mortified by the end of it and Derek laughs in his face for a full minute before they kiss.

Derek can’t figure out why he and Stiles didn’t have someone tape their wedding—clearly they’re committed to documenting the lives of the pack, why would something as important as their own ceremony be left out? But he can’t asks Stiles without it looking suspicious, so he files it in the back of his mind and moves on.

There are birthday and Christmas tapes, with the kids, where, as Derek suspected, the living room is so full of gifts that there’s no place to walk. Their whole life together is laid out neatly on the shelves of the entertainment center in front of him and Derek stays up all night, enraptured, watching one tape after another until Stiles gets back from the late shift and finds him still on the couch.

“Hey,” Stiles says quietly, dropping onto the sofa next to Derek. “What are you doing?”

“The kids are both asleep,” Derek says absently. “Just—watching.” On the screen, Scott is being straddled by a stripper, looking mortified and horribly awkward, while the rest of the pack stands by, laughing and clapping. Allison is sitting next to him, clearly enjoying the show. 

“You just decided you wanted to rewatch the embarrassment of Scott’s bachelor party again? Wasn’t living through it enough?”

“No,” Derek says, rearranging himself so that he’s lying down, head in Stiles’ lap. “Stop talking, I want to enjoy this.”

Stiles sighs, but ruffles one hand through Derek’s hair. “Fine. Can we watch Erica’s next? The part where she does a three-way dance with the guy and the girl is still my favorite pre-wedding moment of all time.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees. “Now, shush.”  
***  
Some of the books look dusty, unused. There’s one— _A Treatise on the Proliferation of Supernatural Beings in Europe in the 17th Century_ —that looks well-read, sticks out a little on the shelf. Derek leafs through it idly, not expecting to find anything of interest—it definitely belongs to Stiles, Derek would rather stab himself in the eye than have to get through something that dry. A bookmark falls out as he flips through the pages—a little bigger than average, laminated. It looks like a plain white rectangle at first, until Derek flips it over. His name is on it. He stares, not understanding for a minute—are his eyes playing tricks on him?—before he hears, from behind, Stiles clearing his throat. 

“December 19th. Happiest day of my life until we got married and the kids were born.”

“I don’t—” Derek starts, lump in his throat.

Stiles walks up behind him—Derek hears him coming, doesn’t try to move away. Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s waist and leans his face against Derek’s back. It muffles his words, but not enough that Derek can’t understand him.

“I love you,” Stiles says, simply, like it’s just that easy. “I know things have been—pretty crazy the last few months. And I’m not—going to pretend that I haven’t been worried about you, and us, and our family.“ Stiles shrugs, arms still around Derek, and he can feel it in his whole body. “But you always come back, don’t you? Even when I don’t think you will.”

“I came here,” Derek says, understanding settling in. “I flew here—”

“And told me you loved me, and that you were sorry for being such an asshole, and that you wanted me to come home. All in one breath,” Stiles says with a laugh. “I thought you were joking at first. You had to kiss me before I believed it. And then I made you grovel for weeks. I’m surprised that you didn’t split.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Derek says, imagining it, how happy he would be to see Stiles again, how he’d do anything to make up for pushing him away. Staying in New York with Stiles, or bringing him back to Beacon Hills. He’d be content in either place, if it meant having Stiles back.

“I know,” Stiles says. “I know.” They stay there for a few minutes, Stiles wrapped around him like an octopus. Even when he starts to sweat and stick to Derek’s back, Derek doesn’t pull away.

Eventually, Stiles turns his head, nuzzles the back of Derek’s neck. “Come on, wolf man, let’s go to bed.”  
***  
Stiles still gets red as anything; he yells back at Derek loud enough to make the house shake—only when the kids aren’t there, he never raises his voice if Lorelei and Ben are in earshot—and he yanks at his hair like he’s mad enough to rip it out because of Derek, all the time. But he also verbally flayed someone at the last PTA meeting who had implied Derek was stupid; made a gallon of homemade chicken noodle soup when Derek caught a bad cold off the kids, and then forced him to eat it all; and will put on a whole pot of coffee, every morning, as soon as he wakes up so that Derek can pour a cup as soon as he gets up, instead of having to wait for it to brew. 

It’s nice, unexpected. Derek would never have imagined Stiles being like this; if he’d thought about, fantasized a little, the Stiles in his head called him an asshole and a jerk a lot, and they had plenty of frantic, angry sex, but all these little, tender things, they were never there. He’s surprised by how much he likes them.

Derek takes Lorelei and Benjamin to Scott’s clinic because Allison had called the house the night before to tell them someone had dropped off a litter of kittens. The minute Lorelei had heard, she’d literally dropped to the ground and started begging Stiles to let her have one.

“Please, Daddy, please, please, please, I’ll take care of her, I promise, please,” she cried piteously from the floor. Benjamin had started babbling at the same time, almost sounding like he was agreeing with her.

Stiles groaned. “Honey, we talked about this. Didn’t we talk about this?” he asked Derek, who could only shrug. “Pets are a lot of work and Papa has his hands full with you and your brother—”

“I can handle it,” Derek said quickly. Lorelei stopped beating her fists on the ground long enough to look up at him. Stiles raised an eyebrow.

“If you want another kid,” he started, voice low, and Derek had flushed.

“Look, she really wants it—”

“And yesterday she wanted a goldfish and last week it was a puppy.”

“Having pets is good, it teaches kids responsibility.”

Stiles threw up his hands. “You know you’re going to end up cleaning up the litter box and waking up at 5AM to feed the thing, right?”

“You, too,” Derek said, and when Stiles just dropped his head on the table, everyone knew the battle was over.

Derek tries to make it an educational field trip, not just a drive to visit Uncle Scott at work. Lorelei goes to a quasi-preschool three mornings a week; she seems smart, and no one seems worried that Benjamin doesn’t say much—“wow, I wonder who he took after,” Stiles said once, when Derek brought it up—but it hasn’t escaped Derek’s notice that he’s pretty much responsible for his kids’ education. He panics about it for twenty minutes one night, unable to fall asleep even while Stiles snores next to him, before accepting that he hasn’t killed his kids yet and they seem pretty normal to him. More normal than he was at that age, anyway. 

“You have to be very careful with the kittens when we get there, okay?” he tells them as he buckles Benjamin into his car seat. “They’re just babies and you’re much stronger than them, so you have to always remember your strength.”

“Okay, Papa,” Lorelei says, very seriously. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch Benji, too, and make sure he doesn’t squeeze them too hard.”

“That’s my good girl,” Derek says, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “And remember, when we’re at the office, Uncle Scott is helping the sick animals, so you can’t bother him.”

Even Derek has to admit that the kittens are really cute. They’re just little balls of fur, walking around like drunken sailors and mewling in high-pitched voices as they try to find their mother, who’s lazily cleaning herself in a corner and keeping a sharp eye on them. At the sight of them, Lorelei emits a noise that might only be audible on werewolf frequency before she rushes the enclosure. Looking at her face, Derek is a little concerned that his daughter might have a heart attack from the pure joy. 

“Papa,” she whisper-shrieks at him. “Do you see them, do you see how cute they are?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, bringing Benji in for a closer look. His son grins, sunnily, as one kitten starts making its way towards the sound of their voices. “Very cute.”

Lorelei turns to him and Derek knows, he knows in that way that parents just must, that she’s about to ask if they can have them all—the answer: a resounding “hell, no,” except without the profanity, but with bonus tears; Lorelei can fake-cry with the best of them, to get what she wants. He’s opening his mouth to answer before she can even ask—Stiles does this all the time and has Lorelei convinced that he’s psychic—when the door to the back room opens and in strolls Deaton.

Derek’s reaction is instinctive, all wolf and no man; he bares his teeth at Deaton, half-shifting even as he steps in front of Lorelei to shield her. She shrieks—whether it’s at the sight of Derek’s face, Benji’s sudden, high-pitched crying, or the appearance of Deaton, he doesn’t know—and grabs Derek around the knees to steady herself.

Deaton only holds up his hands, placating. “I’m not a threat, Derek. Maybe you want to put those away?” he suggests, lifting his chin towards Derek’s fangs.

Derek forces himself to relax: either the kids are empathic or they feel Derek’s emotions more sharply because of the pack connection; either way, his panic is making a bad situation worse. He rubs Benjamin’s back, crouches down to face Lorelei while keeping Deaton in sight. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s okay, don’t cry, everything is fine.”

It takes several long minutes for the kids to calm down enough that Derek can turn his attention away from them and back to the vet, who’s watching the proceedings with a critical eye.

“I thought you left town,” Derek says, trying for casual and missing it by a long shot.

“I did. And now I’ve returned.”

“You aren’t welcome here,” Derek snarls, and he feels Lorelei tensing at his back.

“Now, Derek. That isn’t really your call to make; Scott invited me. I’m not here to hurt you,” he adds after a pause. “Just the opposite in fact.”

“Right,” Derek says. “Come on, kids, we’re leaving. We’ll decide about the cat later.”

It’s a testament to how attuned Lorelei is to his mind that she grabs his hand without a word of complaint, even as he sees her continue to look towards the kittens from the corner of her eye.

“Why don’t you let the kids stay with Scott for a minute, Derek, we need to speak.”

“No,” Derek says, heading for the door.

“That wasn’t a request,” Deaton says mildly, and Derek feels a cold shock crawling up his back. His feet slow, of their own accord. His first desire is to turn around and rip Deaton apart, for the sheer nerve of—attacking Derek in front of his children, but there’s no way to know what Deaton can or can’t make him do. The safest thing is to get the kids out of here and then deal with the other man.

“Scott,” he calls. “Can you come get the kids? I need to talk to Deaton.”

When he turns back around, child-free, his claws are already lengthening and he can feel his eyes turning red. “What the hell do you want.”

Deaton doesn’t seem perturbed to be facing an Alpha who’s just seen his children threatened. Stupid mistake.

“You can’t stay,” Deaton tells him. He’s always inscrutable, but this time, there’s a hint of something else behind the veneer. Sadness, maybe.

“What did you just say?”

“You can’t remain here, Derek. This isn’t your life and your time is almost up. Consider this your two-minute warning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek lies. “And if you’re stupid enough to threaten my family—”

Deaton just raises an eyebrow and Derek stops, mid-word. His mother used to do the same thing.

“Don’t play dumb, Derek. We both know better than that.”

Derek drops the act. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” Deaton says, watching him carefully. “Except to let you know that your time is—running short, shall we say.”

“You sent me here,” Derek says. He knows. He’s known for a while now, but every time he started to think about it, his mind would shy from the truth. Deaton was the last person he saw before he left. The other man isn’t a wizard or a mage, Derek doesn’t think, but there’s always been some kind of undeniable magic about him, the same as with Stiles. He’d been the Hales’ advisor, when Derek was still young, and he understands the supernatural. No other explanation makes sense. But he’d thought—because Deaton was missing in this world, maybe there was no way back. He’d seen an episode of TV like that, years ago, where someone was zapped into the past by a microwave and then there was no way for them to get back, because microwaves didn’t exist in 1950. 

He should have known he could never be so lucky.

“So this was, what, some kind of punishment,” Derek spits out. “Send me here, torture me like this, and then take everything away?”

“Some would call it a gift,” Deaton says mildly. “The opportunity to catch a rare glimpse of what could be.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, that’s part of the problem.” Deaton replies. “You’ve become obsessed with driving others away. An omega never survives on his own; you need a pack.”

“This isn’t—”

“Yes, it is,” Deaton continues, speaking over Derek. “In the real world, your pack has fractured. Isaac is the only one you can still call your own, and that connection is weakening. You need a—glue, for lack of a better word, to keep everyone together.”

“And that’s Stiles.” He can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“What did you find, during your investigations here?”

“Nothing,” Derek admits.

“Now, I don’t think that’s true. Think back to the videos.”

Derek tries. He thinks of the pool party, the graduations, the holidays. “Stiles taped all that—”

“You taped all that,” Deaton corrects gently. “And I think you know who was the center of all that attention.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, without thinking. “Why—”

“Because you need him, as surely as he needs you,” Deaton says. “And because I made your mother a promise—”

“To help me, I know.”

“No,” Deaton says, stopping him mid-word. “I promised her not to let you throw your life away. And that’s what you’ve been doing these last few months, Derek. She would have wanted more for you than that.

He doesn’t have anything to say that. Or maybe he does, maybe he has too much to say, too many questions to ask—why did you promise her that, how much do you know, what would she have done—that he can’t focus his fragmented mind in one direction long enough to get anything out. He struggles for a minute, tries to force his mouth to move, but nothing comes out. Deaton finally lays a hand on his shoulder. He tries not to flinch away from the contact.

“I’m sorry, Derek,” he says, and it sounds like he means it. “But you can’t stay here.”  
***  
“Stiles,” Derek says.

“Yeah, babe?” Stiles asks. Derek has told him, at least five times this week, not to call him “babe,” “baby,” or any derivative thereof, but Stiles continues to stubbornly insist on calling Derek pet names and pinching his cheeks every time. And every time, Derek tries to swat him, but Stiles is fast enough to duck away before he can connect. 

Today is no different; Stiles is racing around the house, doing his best impression of a hummingbird as he tries to set up the decorations and the food for Lorelei’s birthday. They’ve invited over ten of her classmates, plus the entire pack. Stiles was up until three, freaking out about having ten excitable children around a group of werewolves and whether or not they bought a big enough cake and if the sugar would have a detrimental effect on the kids’ development; he woke up at seven, chugged two espressos, and has literally not stopped moving for four hours. Derek is exhausted just looking at him—apparently, birthday parties are the one exception to the “Stiles is, surprisingly, the laid-back parent” rule.

“I just—I really want her to have a good time,” Stiles had said, sometime around two thirty, when he’d been so tired he was almost slurring his words. “I was always the weird one, even at my own birthday parties. I was too hyperactive, I ran circles around everybody. Scott was the only one who never minded, the other kids all—hated it, so.” He shrugged, self-conscious. “I don’t want her to feel like that.”

“She won’t,” Derek promised, reaching out and pulling Stiles into the crook of his arm. “She’s going to have a great time.” He paused a second, cleared his throat. “I always did, when my pack was there.”

“Really?” Stiles asked, trying to sit up to look at Derek. He shoved him down gently and, when Stiles wouldn’t stay put, let out a dramatic sigh and rolled over to pin Stiles to the bed. 

“Stay put and I’ll tell you a story.”

“Please tell me it starts, “once upon a time,”” Stiles murmured.

“‘Twas not in my time, ‘twas not in your time, but it was in somebody’s time,” Derek began, just to feel Stiles’ smile pressed up against his skin. “When we had birthdays at the house, it was always just pack, so that everyone could run around and shift without worrying about it.”

“Didn’t you—”

“We used to bring cupcakes to school, too,” Derek assured him. “But the party at home, that was for family, and it was—the best part. She’s going to have fun tomorrow, I promise—”

He snaps back to the present. “Earth to Derek,” Stiles says, waving a hand in front of Derek’s face. “Were you going to say something, because you called my name and then zoned out.”

“Sorry,” Derek says. “Just—” He pulls Stiles into a kiss, keeps one hand around his wrist, feeling Stiles’ pulse speed up as Derek slots their mouths together, feeling Stiles open underneath him as he licks his way in, as Stiles’ other hand comes up to cradle his jaw. 

“Keep it PG, please,” Boyd says as he passes them, juggling a tray of raw steaks and a tupperware of potato salad. He smirks when the jump apart. “And someone give me a hand, I don’t have time for you two to be necking in here like teenagers.”

Derek is reluctant to leave until Stiles laughs and gives him a little push. “Come on, we’ll finish this later.”

“Please don’t,” Boyd adds, at the same time that Derek says, “you’re going to pass out on the couch at six, let’s not kid ourselves.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles says. “Get out of here, both of you.”

Derek reels him back in one for one last kiss, despite Boyd’s protesting sigh. Stiles smiles against his lips. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

“Thanks,” Derek says dryly.

When he gets outside, the yard has been transformed. There are balloons and streamers everywhere, with a huge banner that reads, “Happy Birthday, Lorelei!” in all caps hanging between two trees. Stiles and Erica disappeared one night with Boyd’s truck and came back with two honest-to-god picnic tables, which are now covered in finger foods while Scott mans the grill, talking to Isaac and waving his spatula in the air. Luckily, Allison is there, too, to poke Scott whenever the meat starts to char. 

Lydia is sitting on a blanket under one of those same trees, having a conversation with Benjamin. When Derek gets close enough, he can hear her say, “and that’s why, if anyone ever tells you that women have made negligible contributions to the fields of science and math, you will say, “that’s completely false.””

“Isn’t that a little advanced for him?” Derek asks, sinking down to join them. Benji turns to him with a smile and holds his little arms out and Derek pulls the baby into his lap.

“It’s never too early to make sure the children have a solid education,” Lydia says. “Besides, he understands every word we say, he just internalizes it. Not unlike some people we know,” she adds, with a pointed look at Derek.

“Mmm,” he says, wordless noise of agreement as he wraps his arms around Benji so that he lean down and give him a kiss. “Are you jealous that your sister is getting all the attention, huh?” He looks around the yard, frowning a little when he can’t spot Lore anywhere. “Where is she?”

“Erica took her for a ride,” Lydia says. “Give him back to me, I want to do some math before the party starts.”

Derek kisses Benji, who giggles, one more time, before passing him easily back to Lydia. He goes without protest, which just goes to show that he’s not so much like Derek, who hated to be held by anyone besides his mother and Laura when he was very young. 

Derek had to use some frankly innovative sex to convince Stiles not to rent a pony for the party and he’s glad, once the other kids start arriving and go nuts over the mini playground and trampoline. They all know each other, which helps, because Lorelei shows up ten minutes late to her own party. Erica roars up in the Camaro and all the adults share a collective eye roll; apparently, Erica never grew out of her flair for the dramatics. Derek blames himself, a little. 

Not as much as he blames Erica, when Lorelei gets out of the car with blue streaks in her hair.

Derek starts to wolf out a little—nothing too noticeable, just fangs and claws, because what the hell—but no one notices, because Stiles has already attracted everyone’s attention by running towards Lorelei, frowning at her, and asking loudly, “hey, who are you? I don’t think you were invited to this birthday party!”

“Daddy,” Lorelei says, rolling her eyes at him. All the parents and kids are laughing.

“Dude, calm down,” Scott says, blocking Derek from sight and shepherding him back towards the grill. “Seriously, we made it this far without people finding out, chill.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Derek growls, but he forces himself to relax enough for his canines to retract. 

Scott frowns at him. “You didn’t freak out when she did it red last year.” In the background, Stiles is saying loudly, “my daughter has brown hair, not blue, so I don’t believe that today is your birthday.”

“ _Daddy_ ,” Lorelei exclaims. “Stop it, you know who I am.”

“Well, I’m freaking out now,” Derek snaps, but he’s managed to get his claws back into fingers. “Let me go, I’m fine.”

In front of them, Stiles has finally said, “oh, Lorelei, there you are!” and swept her into the hug. All the adults are clapping a little and the kids are rushing forward to examine Lore’s hair, but they part easily when Derek moves forward. Lorelei looks at him from Stiles’ arms, beaming. “Do you like it, Papa?”

She looks so much like Stiles in that moment, like the few photographs they have of Stiles’ mom scattered throughout the house, that Derek’s breath catches in his throat. Lorelei just keeps smiling at him, expectantly.

“Yes, baby, you look beautiful,” he says, reaching out to take her from Stiles’ arms. “Happy birthday.”

Lorelei makes out like a bandit, which is unsurprising considering she’s the first pack baby. Laura had been, too, and every year she’d been showered with gifts, most of which she gave away to her cousins within the hour. His daughter is the same; she makes Benji sit next to her while she opens presents and she passes most of them along to him to inspect. He chews on a couple of them, but mostly he waves them in the air for everyone to see.

Derek and Stiles buy Lorelei a bike; blue, her favorite color, with a little horn on it and training wheels. There are books, movies, clothes and, yes, more toys. Derek resigns himself to drowning in another layer of debris come tonight. 

Lorelei does have a great time; the other kids are just as excitable, especially when hopped up on ice cream cake, and they run all over the yard, through the sprinkler, screaming and shouting and being little hell-raisers. The adults hang out on the side, the pack mixing it up easily with the other parents. The other families leave around six, with Derek and Stiles shaking hands at the front gate and Lorelei solemnly thanking the kids for coming to her house. 

After that, it’s pack time; almost everybody shifts, runs around the big backyard to play and tussle with each other. Eventually, everyone settles, lying on the grass or, in Lydia’s case, on an expensive fleece blanket. Derek and Stiles end up sacked out under a tree with the kids between them. Lorelei is out for the count, drooling a little while she squirms in her sleep, while Ben is on his back, staring up at the stars.

Derek can’t remember the last time he felt so—content. He doesn’t know if he ever did, back before the fire, before Kate, before Peter and the kanima and the alpha pack. He can’t remember ever looking at someone the way he’s looking at Stiles and the kids now, and feeling, for once in his life, that everything is right. That this is the way it’s supposed to be: he and Stiles holding hands and staring at each other in what’s undoubtedly the corniest manner known to mankind with their kids between them, and the whole pack around them, and nothing to interrupt their happiness.

“Hey,” he whispers to Stiles, quietly enough that Lorelei only snuffles in her sleep and turns over. 

“Yeah?” Stiles whispers back, shifting a little to sling an arm over Ben’s body. The baby snuggles closer to Stiles with the movement and Derek feels a smile steal over his mouth before he can help himself.

“Don’t forget me, okay?” he says. 

Stiles’ eyebrows draw together. “Are you kidding me? How could I ever forget someone so rakishly good-looking?”

“Seriously?”

“Sorry, I just always wanted to describe someone like that.” Stiles laughs a little, but quietly. “Are you afraid I’m going to leave you for one of those soccer moms, maybe the one who’s really into yoga?”

Derek starts to protest, say he’s not that stupid, but Stiles shushes him with one long finger, pressed gently to Derek’s lips.

“I could never,” he says. “You and me, Lorelei and Ben? That’s it, you’re it for me. You three are my family and I’ll go to my grave fighting for you.” He frowns down at Lore’s head. “Not to make this needlessly pessimistic on our daughter’s birthday, or anything. But I need you to know that.”

“I do,” Derek says quietly. “I know. And I feel the same way.”

“Oh, good,” Stiles says. “Guess that means I’ll keep you.” He reaches out, links his fingers through Derek’s and smiles a little, enough to make sure they’re both in on the joke.

“I love you,” Derek says softly, and Stiles’ answering grin lights up his whole face.  
***  
Derek wakes up in the loft.

He knows before he even opens his eyes. It smells different than the house; there’s an absence of scent that he registers as soon as he’s conscious. No Stiles, no kids, no dinner cooking in the kitchen or sawdust still stuck under his fingernails. Just a kind of blankness, nothing but Derek, his sweat, his frozen dinners full of preservatives reaching his nose even from the freezer.

He forces his eyes open and there’s the ceiling of the loft. He rolls over and it’s the same taupe walls, devoid of handprints and paint smudges, the ever ascending line of ruler marks to show the kids’ growth. The bedroom is empty; of course it is, Derek went to bed alone, the same way he’s gone to bed every night since he came back to Beacon Hills. There’s a heavy pressure, low in his abdomen, but this time it’s not a little boy sitting on him, it’s a full bladder and it’s making the row of stitches along his stomach ache.

Just another day in Beacon Hills, just another morning in Derek’s shitty life: Stiles is three thousand miles away, dating some freshman, or a senior, or an adult film star, and someday he’ll come back to Beacon Hills grown up, a man who’s moved past all of this, who looks at Derek the same way everyone does: like he’s a disappointment. He’ll be married to someone else, and maybe he’ll have kids, two perfect little angels who don’t have 50% of Derek’s awful DNA. Or maybe he won’t, maybe he’ll be childless and prefer it, think that kids are a waste of time and that he’s lucky not to have any.

Derek is moving before he’s conscious of it, grabbing his wallet and his keys and running out the front door. It’s six days before Christmas and the streets of Beacon Hills, never busy at the best of times, are practically deserted. He makes it to the airport in record time and is on the next flight to New York before he can even process what he’s doing. It isn’t until he’s forty thousand feet in the air that he stops and makes himself think. 

This is a really monumentally stupid idea. When Stiles had asked Derek for advice about college, had brought all his acceptance letters to the loft and asked, “what do you think?” Derek had been curt with him, told Stiles to go wherever he wanted. It had been—like ripping off a band-aid, and the look on Stiles’ face had been terrible, but Derek had known it was the right thing to do. Stiles thought he had a responsibility, to all of them; Derek had seen him interact with the Sheriff more than once, and it was obvious that Stiles thought he needed to—take care of everybody. If Derek had asked him to stay, told him it was smart to stick close to Beacon Hills, Stiles would have done it without question. Part of that was pack—no matter how shitty and fractured they were, with everyone heading in different directions, there was still a desire to be close—and part of it was—something else. Derek knew that Stiles—had feelings for him, that he’d asked because he wanted Derek to ask him to stay. And Derek had thought what he always thought, now, when someone wanted him—that it was a bad idea, that Stiles could do better, that Derek was a walking disaster and he didn’t want to drag Stiles down with him, not when Stiles had scholarships to all the best universities and his whole life ahead of him. 

So he’d told Stiles to go, tried to let go of his own unexamined feelings, for what he’d convinced himself was Stiles’ own good. Now, though—now—well. He still thinks Stiles could do so much better; of course he could, he’s Stiles, he’s beautiful and smart and brave, someone Derek loves so much that it makes his heart hurt. But over the last few months, in that—world, Derek’s come to realize that he could do better, too. Or that he did.

That Derek Hale had been a different man. He was a good father, for all his uncertainty, and he’d been a good husband. Even with all his fuck-ups, Stiles still loved him. They had a good life together. He’d never believed he could be that person, had thought he was stealing someone else’s good life, for a while, but now it seems more like—like he rose to the challenge of being a better person, of being someone he could be proud of. Someone his family would have been proud of. 

They’re landing at Laguardia before Derek has thought of what he’ll do, what to say. He knows where Stiles’ dorm is—his responsibility, as alpha—but his mind is blank, the whole way there, of anything except Stiles’ smile as they lay with their kids.  
***  
Stiles opens the door and it’s like Christmas Day in reverse; Derek is struck by the sight of him, eighteen again, now looking impossibly young to Derek’s eyes. He’s gotten used to a Stiles with perpetual stubble and a constant state of bedhead, not the teenager standing in front of him, gaping at his arrival.

“Derek? What are you doing here?” 

The explanation doesn’t go as well as Derek had hoped.

“You don’t understand,” Derek says again. “Something happened, I can’t explain it, but I saw—something.”

Stiles continues to look skeptical.

“The future. A future,” Derek amends. “Stiles, I saw—what it could be like. What we could have if I just—”

“If you just what?” Stiles asks. “Flew here on a whim like a crazy person? Because you’re not really selling yourself, here.”

“It doesn’t make sense, I know. But you’re always saying how crazy our lives are—”

“Yeah, crazy because half of my friends are werewolves. But this is—this is insane, Derek, time travel isn’t—a thing.”

“So maybe I didn’t really go forward ten years, fine,” Derek says. “But what I saw, it was—I didn’t just imagine it, okay?”

“And what you saw was—us, together? If that didn’t tip you off that it was imaginary—”

“We were a family,” Derek says softly, and Stiles’ mouth snaps shut. “It was the four of us, but the whole pack was there and it was stable, things were secure.”

“Four?” Stiles asks, his voice strained.

“Me, you, Lorelei and Benjamin. Benji,” Derek says, watching the color drain from Stiles’ face. “They were—amazing, Stiles, I can’t even tell you. Lore was just like you—this hyperactive little ball, she just bounced all over the house all day long. And whenever you would tell her “no,” she would—have this little frown, just like you when you don’t get your way.” 

“I do not—” Stiles begins, his face scrunching up in a familiar way before he realizes what he’s doing and flushes.

“Just like that,” Derek says, unable to keep a smile off his face as he remembers Lorelei doing the same thing. “And Ben was quieter. He was still just a baby, but you could tell that he was, I don’t know, less excitable, I guess.”

“More like you,” Stiles offers.

“More like me,” Derek agrees. “Sometimes they would make us want to rip our hair out, but they were so—incredible. I never thought I would want kids,” he admits. Stiles looks stricken. “I don’t know why I changed my mind—maybe you convinced me, maybe I just realized what we were missing out on, but they were—they’re the best things I ever did.”

Stiles swallows hard. “Derek,” he says, softly, gently, like he’s trying not to spook the possibly insane werewolf in the room. “They’re not—they’re not real. Okay? You get that, right?”

Derek picks a spot on the floor, stares at it hard so that he won’t have to see Stiles’ face. “It felt like they were. It wasn’t just—a dream. I don’t know how to explain it better than that, Stiles, but it was real. More real. Like, seeing something that you know will happen, before it does.” He looks up then, sees the stricken look on Stiles’ face. “I know. I know that it—sounds insane, I get that, but you have to believe me, Stiles, it was like—like a vision or something.”

“Sometimes,” Stiles says slowly, “When we want something that we can’t have, we—find other ways to experience it. It’s called wish fulfillment—” 

“Spare me the psychology 101 bullshit,” Derek snaps. “I’m a werewolf, I can recognize when there’s a—a supernatural element to something. This wasn’t just a dream, or a—fantasy.”

All the openness that had crept into Stiles’ face when Derek was talking about their kids—all the fondness, the happiness—disappears as fast as it had come. He looks angry, again, pissed off and defensive, the same way he’d looked back in August, before he left for good. Derek doesn’t know what to do, how he can—bridge the gap. He knows that he needs to, that if he walks out of the apartment without fixing this, that it’ll stay broken forever and he feels desperate, frantic to make Stiles understand.

“Lorelei’s middle name is Elizabeth,” he tries, “after your mother.” Stiles blanches again. “Benjamin’s is Robert, after my father.”

“My mother’s name was—”

“Elisheva, I know,” Derek says. “You wanted to honor her, but you also didn’t want Lorelei to be made fun of school all the time, the way you were. You—I thought you would worry more, you know? I thought you’d be the one freaking out over things, but you always handled things. You always handle things, I don’t have to—worry about things, when you’re around, because I know that you can take care of them, you can take care of yourself, of our family.”

He waits for another quick comeback, for Stiles to say something snappy and shut him down, like usual. “You—that’s really what you think?” Stiles croaks, instead. “What happened to not trusting me?”

“Stiles, I trust you with everything,” Derek says, simply. It’s the last thing between them, he thinks. 

“You—you told me to go.”

“I didn’t—” he tries. Starts, stops. He wants to get this right. “I wanted you to know that you didn’t have to stay, if you didn’t want to. I didn’t want you to think—Stiles, you can do anything you want. You don’t have to—stay in Beacon Hills because you think you have to take care of us.” He takes a deep breath, looks at the ceiling instead of Stiles’ face. “I never wanted any of you to think that it was—a life sentence. That’s not what pack is about. And I know you felt—like things would fall apart, if you left, and I didn’t want you to—hold back, thinking you had to. You’re meant for better things.”

Stiles is silent for long enough that Derek has to look back at his face, has to know what he’s thinking about all of this. Stiles looks outraged, mouth opening and closing like he’s too angry to know where to start. Derek thinks he’s pretty far gone if the sight of Stiles gaping like a fish make his heart clench. 

“You asshole,” Stiles starts, low and furious. “How can you—stand there and tell me that you pushed me away for my own good in one breath and then try to—sell me on this imaginary family of ours in the next?”

“Don’t talk about them—”

“You wanted me to go out and live my life, fine,” Stiles says, talking over Derek easily, almost shouting now. “You don’t get to show up here and make me feel—my god, can’t you see how unfair this is?”

“I didn’t—I’m not trying to make you choose,” Derek says, miserably. He hadn’t really thought about what he would say when he got to New York, just knew that he had to see Stiles and fast, while all of the memories were still in his head, while he could still look at Stiles and think “husband” without feeling ridiculous or guilty about it. He had hoped—he had hoped that it wouldn’t take much to convince Stiles, that they would come together easily and just—be, like in that other life, but maybe that had been his imagination, too; when has anything ever come easy where Stiles is concerned?

Stiles is still breathing hard in front of him, sounding like he’s gearing up for a fight. His hands are clenched into fists and Derek can feel the anger coming off of him in waves. It breaks his heart to see. 

“I’m going to—go,” he says, finally, haltingly. Maybe Stiles will take a swing at him, maybe he won’t, but Derek doesn’t think he can spend another minute in this strange-smelling apartment—so different from their home—with a Stiles who looks ten years too young and nothing like the person he’s come to love. “I’m sorry.”

Derek is almost at the door when he hears Stiles say, “yeah, you and me both.” He doesn’t turn back before leaving.  
***  
Derek sleeps and dreams of—nothing. His head is completely blank when he wakes up, and he doesn’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse.

He doesn’t know why he’s awake, either; it’s pitch-black outside the hotel windows, and the clock reads 3:46AM. A second later, there’s a hammering on the door and Derek almost jumps out of his skin. He hasn’t been in New York long enough to present a challenge to any of the city’s five packs, he didn’t tell anyone he’s coming; if it’s a hunter—

Derek gets up to open the door. Whether he tears someone apart or is torn apart, he almost doesn’t care. It’s even odds which way things will go.

When he opens the door, it isn’t a hunter, it’s—Stiles and Derek’s brain feels like it’s gone off-line at the sight of his face. Stiles is flushed, like he ran the whole way from the park, and his fist is still raised mid-air, like he’s going to either pound on the door or Derek’s face, whichever is in his path. There’s a moment where they both look at the fist, awkwardly, before Stiles lowers his arm.

“What are you doing here, did something happen?” Derek asks, the alpha instinct to protect rising up in him. He wants to pull Stiles into his chest and he takes a step forward before he remembers. That’s not his place anymore.

“Did you—do something,” Stiles asks, and he’s almost wheezing. For someone who played lacrosse throughout high school, he’s isn’t in the best of shape.

“Like what? Stiles, what’s going on?”

Stiles continues gasping for breath like he’s drowning. Derek reaches out for his arm, means to pull him into the room before someone hears voices and gets suspicious, but Stiles shrugs him off.

“I dreamed,’ he says, accusingly, and Derek gives in to the temptation to roll his eyes. 

“Humans generally do.”

“About—them,” Stiles says, waving an arm at Derek’s face. “The—kids.” He narrows his eyes at Derek. “Tell me the truth, did you—do some kind of spell, or trick, to make that happen?”

Derek just shakes his head; he doesn’t think he can manage words right now. What are the chances that Stiles could just—

They stare at each other in silence a minute before Stiles bursts out, “Erica’s hair—was shorter?” and Derek can’t stop the sharp intake of breath. Even Stiles hears it and then he starts to look frantic. 

“You gave her the car—or did she just borrow it from you—and she showed up, we were having a—”

“Picnic,” Derek says, softly, and Stiles cuts himself off mid-word. He looks shocked.

“That was the last day,” Derek explains, clearing his throat. “Before I—woke up, that’s where we were. It was Lorelei’s birthday.”

“And we bought her a bike,” Stiles says slowly, eyes unfocusing like he’s looking at something beyond the hotel room walls. “Blue because it’s her favorite color.”

“Yes,” Derek says, but it doesn’t look like Stiles even hears him.

“She looks like my mom,” he says, hoarsely. “Like my mom when she was little, except her hair is darker. And Benjamin looks like—”

“Me,” Derek offers. “You always say that he got all the Hale genes, but I think he has your eyes.”

“They’re green,” Stiles says incredulously. “How could you think—”

“The shape,” Derek insists. “It’s the same.”

Stiles laughs and it’s not—angry, or bitter, the way Derek had expected it to be. “We argued about that so many times that even Allison got sick of us,” he says. “God, we were—disgusting.”

“The old married couple,” Derek says. That had been the old joke, in the pack—Derek and Stiles hadn’t even been married that long, but everyone made fun of them, said they’d been together for fifty years and argued like it, too. 

Stiles comes inside, then, walks straight to the couch and sits down without a word. Derek doesn’t want to crowd him, takes the arm chair and just waits for Stiles to speak. It takes a long time—he’s staring at his hands like they hold the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

After a long pause, Stiles clears his throat. “I don’t understand—how this can be happening.” He turns earnest eyes towards Derek. “Folie a deux, mass delusions, but you didn’t—tell me any of that stuff, so how could I know? And people don’t just—share dreams, this isn’t Inception.” He narrows his eyes at Derek. “Did you incept me?”

“I didn’t even watch that movie and you know it,” Derek replies.

Stiles deflates. “Yeah, well, I’m shit out of other ideas.”

“I think I might—have a theory,” Derek offers. ”I was attacked, the other night, out in the Preserve.”

“You didn’t tell me that!” Stiles says, sounding outraged. “What was it, are you hurt?”

“If you would let me finish,” Derek says pointedly. Stiles rolls his eyes, but shuts up. “I went to Deaton afterwards and he—said some things.”

“Such as?”

Derek swallows hard. “He told me to get my shit together, for starters. He said that letting the pack—break apart was the wrong thing to do. And then I saw him again, over there, and he—”

“What?” Stiles asks, gently, like he’s trying not to spook Derek, and his tone makes Derek want to grab him. 

“He told me once that helping me was a promise he made my mother,” Derek says. Across from him, Stiles falls still. “And then, in that—world, he said that she—wouldn’t have wanted me to throw my life away like this. That she would have wanted me to be happy.” 

“And you think he—did some kind of magic so that you could—” Here, Stiles swallows hard. “Be happy?”

“Yes,” Derek says. “He and Morrell were both gone when I got there, but he showed up, months later, and told me that it was—a glimpse, of what could be.”

“And what about here? Now?”

“I didn’t—check before I left,” Derek admits. “After I woke up and realized what was happening, I just—”

“Jumped on the first plane to New York?” Stiles asks, lightly.

“Yes,” Derek says, seriously.

“Oh,” Stiles says. “Ah—okay.”

They sit in silence for a minute.

“I didn’t mean to—” Derek starts, not even knowing where he’s going but needing to say something, while Stiles is still here. “I didn’t come here to upset you or to—make things harder for you. I didn’t really think—”

Stiles snorts. “When do you ever?”

“Shut up,” Derek says. This could be—his last chance and he doesn’t want to leave Stiles—angry, or not understanding. “I was just running on instinct and—I wanted to see you.”

Stiles doesn’t seem mad, not like back in the dorm room, but he also isn’t—happy. Derek thinks about how much Stiles is probably enjoying himself, here in New York, going to school, not worrying about someone he loves being ripped apart every other week. He probably goes on dates, goes to parties, is just one more person walking around the city, making himself anew. Derek tries to imagine the future—a Stiles ten years’ down the road with a life, experiences that Derek doesn’t know anything about—and he hates it. He hates that he’s already missed four months of Stiles’ life—long weeks and weekends with strangers, not with Derek. He doesn’t know if it’s all a side effect of the vision or if he was jealous before and just couldn’t admit. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to figure that out now.

“How did we—get together there?” Stiles asks finally. “In that—reality. I know it had been a while—I was mad at you for not mowing the lawn, for christ’s sake, what kind of boring, married shit is that—but I didn’t get a chance to ask.” 

Derek clears his throat. “I told you to go wherever the hell you wanted for college, and you came to NYU to study anthropology.”

“But—”

“And after four months, I flew out here to—tell you I loved you and ask you to come home. And you said, “yes.””

Stiles’ mouth hangs open in shock. It shouldn’t be so criminally attractive, but that’s life.

“You turned the ticket into a bookmark, for our first anniversary gift,” Derek adds. “Paper.”

There’s a moment—a beat—where Derek waits, for Stiles to get angry, to start yelling again about Derek ruining his life and generally being a bastard. There might be a punch or two in there—Derek is long overdue for one. There’s a weird tension, just hanging in the air, as Derek looks at Stiles and Stiles looks back, mouth opening for a second like he’s going to say something, before he launches himself across the living room.

Derek stands, braces himself for the hit, but instead Stiles reaches out and pulls Derek in. Stiles frames his face carefully between those two broad hands and leans in to press their mouths together. They kiss for long, breathless minutes, Stiles a little uncertain, hesitant as he maps the inside of Derek’s mouth. It’s not their first kiss, technically, but it still feels like it and Derek revels in the feel of Stiles’ body, pressed close to his, the feel of his arms under Derek’s hands and the shape of his lips.

“Ask me to stay,” Stiles says, pulling away just far enough to form the words against Derek’s mouth. “If you’re—if you’re serious about this, if this isn’t just a joke or something—”

“Stay,” Derek says. “Please, Stiles. Stay with me.”

Stiles swallows hard, arms still looped around Derek’s neck like he can’t bear to let go. “I moved all the way across the country. You couldn’t have said this four months ago?”

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t—understand, what I’d be giving up if I let you go.”

“And now you do?”

“Now I do.”

“Well,” Stiles says. “In that case, I’d better check out Berkley’s policy on transfers. Wait,” he says, eyes narrowing. “I hope you’re not expecting me to be a stay-at-home dad just because you’re the big, manly alpha.”

Derek smiles without meaning to; he can’t really help himself, faced with an armful of a joyous, happy Stiles. “I worked from home, actually. So I could be with the kids.”

Stiles laughs.

**EPILOGUE**

“Are you ready?” 

“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles says, turning around so quickly that his foot catches on the rug and he almost goes flying. “You’re not supposed to see me before the wedding, it’s bad luck.”

Derek rolls his eyes at Stiles and they stare at each other for a second, wordless, before Stiles cracks up.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. Derek used to think that Stiles was mildly psychic, maybe an empath or something because of the spark, but he’s since realized that Stiles just knows him—knows all of them—so well that’s it scary and a little out-of-this-world.

“Are you ready?” he asks again. Stiles straightens the lapels of his tux, frowns down at it.

“I feel really silly wearing something so fancy to be married by an Elvis impersonator, I’d just like to say.”

“Write your congressman,” Derek advises. “Come on, we gotta go.”

They woke up at seven this morning, hopped in the Jeep (Erica has long since commandeered the Camaro; “it’s not a family car and you don’t need to pick anybody up anymore, let me have it,” she’d said, and Derek had caved, as always), and drove four hours to Vegas. They ate breakfast in the car and Stiles hooked up his iPod, played every obnoxious wedding song he had, beginning and ending with “Band of Gold.”

Derek looked over at him, right outside Barstow; Stiles was shouting, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long.” He winked when he saw Derek looking and gave a little shimmy of his hips that should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t; Derek had known for a long time just how far gone he was on Stiles, but it was still nice to have a reminder every once in awhile. 

They’d driven right to the courthouse, then the chapel, where Elvis was waiting to perform the ceremony. Part of the package involved Elvis walking the bride down the aisle; Stiles had laughed himself sick at the thought of it and Derek had flatly refused to entertain the idea. “We can walk down the aisle together,’ he’d said, and Stiles had looked at him, and smiled, and said, “perfect.”

“I’m ready,” Stiles says. “Any word from the hospital?”

Derek shakes his head. Lydia and Allison are under strict instructions to call Derek and Stiles as soon as the baby is born, wedding ceremony be damned. Derek had texted them just a few minutes ago; Lydia had replied, “there’s been nothing yet. Go get married and hurry home.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, shaking out arms and legs one last time. “Okay, let’s do this thing.” He reaches out and grabs Derek’s hand, links their fingers together. He’s beaming. “We have a daughter to bring home.”

“Yeah, we do,” Derek says, giving in to the impulse to lean forward and kiss Stiles just once, briefly, before stepping back and pulling him towards the door.


End file.
